FAYETTE COUNTY, WV (WOAY) – As we approach Saturday, all eyes are on Fayette County to see if it will stay orange or go back to yellow, which will determine what school will look like next week.
If it goes to yellow, Fayette County Schools will press on with their original plan of the blended learning model.
If it is orange, Fayette County Superintendent Gary Hough says everyone will be doing remote learning from home.
“On Sunday, I’ll be giving a general message to our parents on our school messenger system of course and our Facebook page and our Twitter page,” he said.
This will just be for the first week, and then they will re-evaluate on that following Saturday to see what the county’s status is.
Next week, if they go to remote learning, there are plans in place to have students pick up their laptops on Tuesday.
“We have a 12 to 3 time at our schools and a 5 to 7 time at our schools, so the parents can come in and get the computers and get all the instructions and deal with that,” he said. “That will be done in a drive-thru process, and we have to be patient, but we’ll work through that process with them at each of our schools.”
When it comes to feeding the students, if the county is considered orange, there will be feeding sites set up at each school on Thursday from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. for students and parents to pick up their 5-day pack.
“If we’re in remote, we’re going to even carry that food a little further out into the communities,” Hough said. “There will be some other site information we will give out. We’re going to take some buses and take food out into the communities.”
During this time of uncertainty, Superintendent Hough is not only asking everyone to wear their mask but also is asking that everyone remains patient reassuring people that teachers, staff and administrators are prepared and trained to go either way.
“Let’s remember that we’ve never educated children this way, so we’re going to have children that struggle with devices,” he said. “We’re gonna have glitches with the devices and we’re going to have a glitch with human error with the device. It’s about patience. We’ll work through it. None of this is easy.”
He says lessons for the K-2 students doing remote learning will be more centered around packets rather than computers.