FAYETTE COUNTY, WV (WOAY) – In an emergency meeting on Thursday night, Fayette County Schools voted to extend blended learning to October 30.
This means that whether the county is in green, yellow or gold, the students will do two days in and three days out.
“We follow the metric to the level the state gave out. We added our own wrinkle,” Superintendent Gary Hough said. “We didn’t vary from the state. We’re not permitted to, but we added our own wrinkle to look at our own children and see where we’re at.”
A green designation would typically mean a full week of school but not in Fayette for now.
Blended learning means last names A-L will come on Monday and Tuesday and M-Z will come on Thursday and Friday. Vocational students will go Monday-Wednesday.
If the map is in orange or red, it will still be remote learning.
In terms of athletics, if students are coming off of an orange or red week and their color improves on Saturday, no athletic contests will be allowed until the following Thursday.
This is all in response to the growing amount of community spread in the county as students who have not been in school are still getting mild symptoms and testing positive.
“We had a few cases of students in the last week or so and that’s kind of given us an idea of what that’s really gonna look like and so that has prompted us to say we need to take this slow,” Fayette County Health Office Dr. Anita Stewart said. “Be conservative because you know, we are still learning about this virus and how it works and how it acts in children.”
Hough says they are continuing to help students with their remote and virtual learning and says in working with health officials this was the best option to put the safety and health of students first.
“We don’t want to be the individuals that cause a community spread to become worse,” Hough said. “We didn’t want to put our kids in a situation. Keeping them socially distanced until we have a better idea of what’s happening we felt was the best decision possible and that was a group decision by the board and of course myself last night.”
This will be based on the school map that releases on the state board’s website on Saturdays at 5 p.m.
