Quarantined Wake students will no longer join virtual academy, instead they'll visit teacher's virtual office hours
Students who must quarantine for COVID-19 will have access to coursework online and “live” office hours with school employees for help, Wake County Public School System officials announced Tuesday.
Unlike last year, virtual academy won’t be available to students who must quarantine, because virtual academy is now set up as entirely separate from other instruction.
Officials announced the plan as a part of an update on the district’s COVID-19 protocols, presented to the Wake County Board of Education during a work session Tuesday afternoon.
Traditional calendar schools start Aug. 23 in Wake County.
COVID-19 case numbers are rising in Wake County and the nation, including among children.
The latest data from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services show 637 total cases reported among children ages 5 to 17 during the week of Aug. 8. A month before that, during the week of July 11, that age group only recorded 150 cases, four times less.
Data on Tuesday showed 54,494 of Wake County’s 12 to 17 year-olds with at least one vaccine dose, 49,009 of whom are fully vaccinated.
Some additional protocols for this school year include:
- Possibly limited visitors: Schools can determine who is essential and non-essential.
- Day field trips are allowed when all COVID-19 safety protocols can be followed, but overnight trips are canceled. All area superintendents will review field trip proposals.
- Schools can continue to host orientations and other events in small cohorts or virtually.
Other protocols will remain the same:
- Seating charts in classroom, cafeteria and buses.
- Grouping students for recess, lunch and other activities.
- Social distancing when possible.
- Providing hand sanitizer and cleaning schools daily.
- Some protocols remain uncertain.
Wake County struggling to hire enough staff for upcoming school year
Staffing and resource shortages could affect how much food can be brought to students outside of the cafeteria and thus how many students can eat outside of the cafeteria. It could also limit curbside meal service. The district is already limiting menu options until more staff can be hired.
“We’ve got to substitute all the time, we’ve got to go with the flow,” Chief of Facilities and Operations Mark Strickland said.
The district has a vacancy rate of 27.3% for child nutrition services employees, still needing to hire 226 people.
A handful of public comments submitted for Tuesday night’s regular board meeting asked the district to implement stricter requirements during lunch, such as social distancing.
One parent wrote, “I toured my son's new middle school last week and was dismayed that there were absolutely NO plan in place to protect against COVID in the cafeteria. According to the assistant principal this was because there was no guidance from the district. Please provide guidance for spacing, assigned seating, staggered eating times, lunch in classrooms, and anything else that can help protect our kids from the more vigoroursly (sic) spreading Delta variant so that our kids can stay in school longer.”
Several comments were in favor of the mask mandate approved by the board earlier this month and several others were against it.
Parents also spoke at the meeting.
Lindsey Tobin, a mother of three, lamented mask requirements for her son who will be a kindergartener this year but was concerned about other health measures disrupting his experience. He’s not allowed to play tag “because ‘it’s too dangerous,’” she said, baffled it could be dangerous, when children have a 99.9% survival rate for COVID-19. She said he’s “being robbed of normal kindergarten experience.”
Another mother complained that her eighth grade son must carry around a 26-lb. backpack because students can’t use lockers.
“What evidence supports this?” she asked.
After the meeting, Tim Simmons, a district spokesman, said principals have a lot of discretion beyond district guidance. That could include differences in recess activities or locker use.
The district has already sent principals guidance on lunch, but just what that would look like may vary based on the size of a school's cafeteria and how full the school is compared to its capacity. But some guidance is uniform.
"The key to lunch guidance is keeping the kids in small groups," Simmons said. Talking is OK, he said. Some interpreted lunch rules as requiring silence last year, he said, but quarantine rules apply to students who come into contact with a COVID-19-positive person regardless of whether they spoke with that person.
"It was never the district's intent to institute silent lunch, but that happened," he said.
On Tuesday, district officials told the Board of Education that quarantined students will have access to either Canvas or Google Classroom, where their teachers will post coursework. During quarantine, they should not go multiple days without speaking to a person via a live conversation, Assistant Superintendent for Academics Drew Cook said. Educators and students should communicate daily, per the district.
If an entire classroom must quarantine, the class may become virtual, with live instruction, for the quarantine period.
Currently, Wake County schools have six COVID-19 clusters, up from four last week, Assistant Superintendent for Student Support Services Paul Koh said.
Quarantine rules employed by the district are dictated by the Wake County Health and Human Services, which uses North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quarantine guidance.
Current quarantine rules stipulate 14 days quarantine for contact with a positive person, or fewer days, if the person tests negative for COVID-19. However, a person who is fully vaccinated does not need to quarantine if they come into contact with a COVID-19-positive person but show no symptoms.
For those who are unvaccinated, which is thousands of Wake County schoolchildren, the rules different. For example, an unvaccinated person wearing a mask would have to quarantine if they came into close contact with a COVID-19-positive person who wasn’t wearing one.
The district is meeting the ABC Collaborative this week to discuss additional protocols, including whether and when to require COVID-19 testing. The ABC Collaborative has recommended regular testing of athletes who aren’t vaccinated, but the district has not adopted requirements for testing beyond quarantine protocols.
On Tuesday, the board also voted to continue its data-sharing agreement with the Collaborative to help monitor and set COVID-19 protocols.
{
"name": "follow",
"attrs": [],
"children": null
}Like most districts in North Carolina, the Wake County Public School System has already voted to mandate masks for students, faculty and staff at all grade levels.
Unlike last year, the state will not require students to stay 3 feet apart this year. Signs and stickers around campuses will remind students to socially distance, but there is no requirement.
On Monday, WRAL's Amanda Lamb looked at how school bus rides could be different during coronavirus.
The school district has always had seating charts for students on their buses, but this year, assigned seats will be enforced more than ever to help schools trace possible coronavirus cases, officials say.
WCPSS also recently changed lunch procedures to separate students in each class into pod-style groups. This will allow classmates to talk during lunch while limiting the number of students who would need to quarantine if a case impacts a classroom.
