10:06am: Talkline with Hoppy Kercheval

Students return to a very different school environment in West Virginia

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Across West Virginia students, teachers, administrators, and school service personnel were admittedly nervous about how Tuesday would go. It’s the most unusual first day of school in the state’s history.

School systems have been preparing for weeks with a blend of in-school face-to-face instruction combined with distance learning via on-line platforms originating at local schools and some from the state Department of Education in Charleston. The only experience anybody had with the distance and virtual learning came in March when the last two months of the 2020 spring semester were forced online literally overnight. Most agree the rushed experiment wasn’t a very good trial run.

Since then a lot has changed. Teachers, school systems, and students are getting more accustomed to the idea and how to make on-line instruction work. But all would agree, nothing beats a teacher at the head of a room offering face to face directions.

John Hudson

“In a remote setting we know that’s not optimal because we have students and families who do not have adequate internet service,” said Putnam County Schools Superintendent John Hudson.

Hudson’s county is one of the more advanced counties for internet, but even Putnam County had 1,200 students who had to be accommodated with hot spots and distance learning packages. More than half of Putnam County’s student body opted for in-person learning. When the county declined into the “orange” on the color-coded alert map last Saturday, everybody found themselves at least for the first week learning from their kitchen table.

Counties took some creative steps to address the Internet deserts around the state. In some places school buses were staged with internet hotspots. The technology would only link up to the county’s hardware and software packages to insure it was used exclusively for learning.

“We put hotspots on almost 20 of our buses and have them parked in varying areas where we know we had some issues in the spring,” said Dr. Eddie Campbell, Superintendent of Monongalia County Schools.

Monongalia County was the only county in the state with a “red” status on the color coded map, meaning all students were at home and may be there for some time. Elsewhere school buses delivered meals to home bound students.

Jefferson County, with a yellow designation,started Tuesday with a staggered schedule to bring in just a few children at a time to get them accustom to new procedures and rules of social distancing, masks, and changes since they were last there.

“Our staff felt really, really good about today and about things going to smoothly, so I think they’re all building confidence,” said Dr. Bondy Shay Gibson, Superintendent of Jefferson County Schools.

Cabell County was also at a yellow status and it was a similar relief for Superintendent Ryan Saxe.

“There’s nothing like pulling up to a school and seeing children out on the play yard, interacting in a gymnasium, or right there in the classroom learning from their teacher,” he said.

But many of the yellow counties are trending toward the orange. If they have drifted into that color on the map by Saturday, next week’s second week of school will be far different than the first. Gibson worried that will be the case for her county’s students and it will devastating.

“In total honesty, I will likely shed some tears if we hit red. It’s just so important. If you had seen the kids and their parents getting off the bus and out oft he cars, it has been such a hard time for them. It will be very hard if we can’t keep doing this,” said Gibson.





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