Positive cases among GCSS staff halts in-person instruction for 2 days
The Gilmer County School System has gone virtual.
The district keeps a constant tab on its positive COVID-19 cases, and those numbers began to climb for staff members. By last Friday, more than 60 staff members were absent and action needed to be taken.
“Early last week we started to notice that Omicron was starting to hit our staff very hard,” superintendent Dr. Brian Ridley said Monday. “We had over 50 staff members out Thursday (Jan. 13), which is around 10 percent of our workforce.
“When it comes down to it, we can’t be open if we can’t supervise and serve the kids. If we can’t drive buses, serve lunches, teach lessons and provide basic safety and supervision, we’ve got a problem.”
When the final decision was made last Friday, over 60 staff members were at home with a positive diagnosis. The number of positive cases among students was more than 70 and increasing.
With the district already experiencing a shortage of substitute teachers, the decision was made to switch to virtual learning for Tuesday, Jan. 18, and Wednesday, Jan. 19. Along with the weekend and Monday’s Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, it gave staff extra time to recover.
“Subs have been a nationwide issue ever since the pandemic began,” Ridley said. “For us, having so many people out, it was really hurting us. We had people in every corner substituting for everyone else. We were pretty desperate for subs. In looking at the numbers and seeing the growth in our area, two things came together at once.
“We decided we could parlay the MLK holiday into an extra day or two and get all of our people back. They’ll be out for five days. Omicron is moving faster, but people are getting over it faster and getting back to work. We made the decision to go virtual Friday (Jan. 14) afternoon, and that gave us a day to prepare for it.”
Lessons were uploaded to Google Classroom so they would be ready for students Tuesday. Teachers will be available to students via email during regular school hours.
“With our numbers climbing, it let me know we probably made the right decision to go virtual, we just needed that day to get it together and make sure we sent home laptops,” Ridley said.
“During this same time, we were also getting a lot of information from the National Weather Service that we might have some severe weather coming in. With MLK and the weather, we said ‘Let’s make sure we prepare and do this right.’ We’ll use the time to let Omicron get through. It’s kind of unusual to make that determination so far in advance, but I think we made the right call, and I’m pretty glad we did.”
Extracurricular activities were permitted to practice and play Tuesday and Wednesday after all sports were sidelined by Monday’s inclement weather.