PARSONS, W.Va. — Tucker County schools will be on remote instruction until Oct. 12 after more than two dozen of the school systems employees had to observe quarantine following contact tracing connected to active COVID-19 cases.
Tucker County School Superintendent Alicia Lambert said there are only six total COVID-19 cases in the entire school system and just 18 in the entire county but those who had possible contact with those residents has created a staff shortage.
“We didn’t shutdown necessarily due to the numbers of cases in the school. We shutdown because we have 26 employees currently quarantined and not enough subs (substitutes) to fill the vacancies,” Lambert told MetroNews Tuesday.
Seven of those workers observing quarantine are bus drivers, which represents more than half of the county’s fleet.
Lambert said finding enough substitute teachers is an issue just about every school year. She said that’s magnified during the pandemic.
“In your typical school year we have classrooms that don’t have subs but we’re able to move kids around and provide coverage by switching teachers around but we knew this year we weren’t going to be able to do that because of core grouping,” Lambert said. “We knew it was going to be a struggle.”
State School Superintendent Clayton Burch acknowledged on Monday’s MetroNews “Talkline” that the shortage of teachers continues to be an issue in West Virginia.
“We have a statewide teacher shortage. We’ve known that and we’re short on substitutes,” Burch said. “We’re now working with Chancellor Tucker (state Higher Education Chancellor Dr. Sarah Armstrong Tucker), the Higher Education Policy Commission and higher education institutes. We’re actually looking at how we can utilize our student teachers to step in during an emergency and actually help some of these counties with substitute teachers.”
Tucker County did have two weeks of in-person instruction and originally planned to begin blended instruction this week. Lambert said they had to pivot and now the quarantined teachers and the rest of the county’s teaching staff are teaching from home this week.
“Students had all been preparing in school for the last couple of weeks how to use their Chrome Books. The teachers, in a lot of classrooms, were using their Chrome Books in instruction just like the kids would have it remotely so they would be use to it. They made sure everything was downloaded when they left school last Thursday,” Lambert said.
Going back and forth to remote learning may happen a few times this school year, Lambert said.
“I’m praying that it’s just a wave and we can get through it and then we’ll be okay,” Lambert said. “It’s going to be a year of nothing but pivoting I’m afraid
Although cases have been increasing in Tucker County, Lambert said fortunately no one has been extremely sick. She said the six positive cases in the school system are made up of three students and three employees.