The West Washington School Corporation will be moving to virtual education for the next five days while staff and students quarantine.
The school has been notified of a positive Covid-19 result of a staff member from the Jr High School.
There are several staff members that must be quarantined as close contacts and it will affect a number of students as well, according to Superintendent Keith Nance.
Additionally, Nance said the corporation has several staff members already on quarantine or awaiting results of Covid-19 tests.
“The decision has been made to move to a virtual schedule for a minimum of five days,” said Nance. “This could be longer after consultation with the health department.”
This is for the entire corporation K-12.
“Due to the nature of our corporation set up, we feel it is necessary to take these precautions for all grades,” Nance said in a release on social media Sunday night.
On Monday, school administration and the health department will be conducting contact tracing and notifying anyone that may have been in “close contact” as defined by the CDC.
Virtual instruction will begin Monday, November 2.
“Monday’s virtual schedule may look a little different, because our teachers received very little notice of the closure,” said Nance. “Teachers will be contacting students, holding Google Meets and posting important information on their Google Classroom. Students should check into their Google Classrooms and complete work on their normal daily schedule.”
”If you are a parent of a younger child and they cannot access the content until you are home from work, please contact your teacher and your building administrator so we can add you to the list of students that will be completing their work after school hours.”
Until contact tracing is complete, the school is not sure of the impact on extracurricular activities.
“This could impact a small number of students and staff or it could impact a larger group,” said Nance.
“We will not know the full impact until the contact tracing process is complete. Teams and players will be contacted about Monday’s events some time on Monday.”
The school’s football is set to play in their Sectional Championship game this Friday night and the girls basketball team is set to begin play this week.
Nance said to prepare as if practices and events will go on as planned.
“We will notify you if there is a change,” he said.
“We apologize for the inconvenience of this late notice. Our administration was notified at 6:00 pm on Sunday 11/1/20 as soon as they received their results. This communication was timely and exactly what we needed to make the best decision for the safety of our students and staff. If we would have had to wait to hear from the ISDH we may not have known until Monday after everyone had already arrived at school. I commend our families for being vigilant and effectively communicating with us,” he noted.
This is the school’s second closure due to Covid-19. They recently returned to in-person education on Oct. 26.
Salem schools has been out due to several cases of Covid-19 after fall break and is set to return to in-person instruction on Monday, November 2.
