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Eastern Panhandle counties pivoting with new school map colors

BERKELEY SPRINGS, W.Va. — West Virginia’s eastern panhandle counties are adjusting after turning orange and gold on the latest COVID-19 school map.

Morgan and Berkeley counties are orange, meaning remote instruction will take place this week while Jefferson County is gold which will allow in-person instruction to continue but with further mitigation requirements.

Morgan County School Superintendent Kristen Tuttle said Monday her county has been preparing for remote learning since school began.

“We were fortunate enough to be able to hang in there for about six weeks before we had to transition so we are blessed in that sense,” Tuttle said Monday during an appearance on MetroNews “Talkline.”

The Berkeley County school system was handing out meals to school families Monday. Office of Child Nutrition Coordinator Kristie Randall said the district has worked hard since the pandemic shut down schools in the spring to provide nutrition and variety in the weekly meal distributions for students learning at home.

“We never dreamt of having to do a drive-thru meal service but the parents for the most part have been very positive with our efforts and what we’ve been working through to put this feat off,” Randall said.

More patience might be warranted this week, as some parents reported car lines out to the street at one of the five pick-up spots in Berkeley County Monday. This week’s five-day meal bags were to include five days’ worth of breakfast and lunch per student with hot and pre-packaged meal options.

Tuttle said she anticipates some technology challenges this week because there are some parts of Morgan County where getting internet is an issue.

“We’re going to face some challenges that we probably didn’t anticipate but we have a lot of very hard-working teachers and staff members that are constantly working day-in and day-out since school started to do the very best they can for students,” Tuttle said.

Morgan County is on the Schoology system for remote instruction.

Tuttle is hoping the orange is just a one week blip on the COVID school map for Morgan County. She said four straight days of testing last week should bring the numbers down. She said the schools were not connected to the increasing numbers.

“So that gets a little bit frustrating from our perspective because our students and our families are highly impacted with this remote learning when most of the cases that have caused our increase and our orange metric are not school-related. So that’s a frustration we have,” Tuttle said.

WEPM Radio’s Marsha Kavalek contributed to this story.





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