SUMMERS COUNTY, WV (WOAY) – After nearly a year Summers County students in kindergarten through eighth grade are finally back in school five days a week. The schools were set to bring students back in on Monday, but due to the inclement weather had to wait until Wednesday.
“Everybody is excited to be back, especially the elementary kids,” said Summers County School Superintendent David Warvel. “Obviously junior high and high school kids it’s like okay I’m going back to school, but it is nice to see smiling faces and people excited. Today is officially a first day of school, basically, for our kids.”
However, high school students will still remain on their blended model to reduce the number of students in the building. The reason is because the middle school students had to be moved into the high school building this year due to structural issues with the middle school building. The plan is to keep high schools in school four days a week with Wednesday’s being used as an extra help and remote learning day.
“What we are doing so we don’t have it too full in the building right now is we are just going to go our Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday schedule with our high school,” Warvel said. “Then on Wednesday’s if your having a hard time with your classes, high school students can come on Wednesday’s.”
To help keep students protected the schools have barriers around each desk and require students to wear their masks. Superintendent Warvel says he has also heard teachers reminding their students to wash their hands as they enter the building. Additionally, each school building and bus also has an electronic sprayer to sanitize areas after they have been cleaned.
“Every school bus gets sprayed down after kids have been on the bus and that’s going to be at least twice a day,” said Warvel. “Then the school building you can spray that down once the students leave. We will still do regular cleaning, but that is really nice to spray down after all the cleaning has been done just to hit the air and every surface gets sprayed. That’s an extra barrier for our kids to be protected.”
Even though kindergarten through eight students don’t have to follow the daily color map, Superintendent Warvel says he still watches it avoid any issues.
