Greenwood High School students will return to their classrooms Monday for in-person instruction after the campus was shut down for a week because of an outbreak of COVID-19 cases among five students.
Dr. Mary Brown, the superintendent for the Greenwood Leflore Consolidated School District, said in an email Friday that in addition to the high school students returning to class, football practice will also resume.
No other schools in the district were closed, and all continued to provide in-person classroom instruction during the past week, which was the first full week of classes for the district.
If there are outbreaks among students and/or staff at one of the district’s schools, school officials will follow the Mississippi State Health Department’s guidance on closures and review the situation on a case-by-case basis “to determine if the school would be able to operate in a safe and secure manner for teaching and learning,” Brown said.
“If a school does shut down, the district is prepared to provide those students who must quarantine with quality instruction,” she said.
“For quarantined students, (the Mississippi Department of Education) does allow us to allow individual students to utilize distance learning on an as-needed basis due to COVID-19 exposure.”
The Mississippi State Board of Education passed two policies earlier this summer that called for school districts to return to in-person classroom instruction as the primary method of learning for the 2021-2022 school year.
State law dictates that districts provide a minimum of 330 minutes of teaching a day and a minimum of 180 days of instruction per school year.
In the event that a district must resort to virtual days due to an outbreak of cases, the state Board of Education requires that remote learning adhere to the same mandated hours of instruction.
For the prior school year, the Board of Education eased its requirements in how the 180 days of instruction were met, allowing districts to use a combination of traditional, virtual or hybrid learning.
That flexibility has been removed for this school year.
Brown said that, according to a document from the Department of Education, “districts are not allowed to continue offering hybrid options. In accordance with this document, all students must be either ‘enrolled in a virtual program 100% of the instructional time or attend school in person (100% of the time).’”
The policies the Board of Education passed in the summer for a return to in-person classes were also made in accordance with the requirements of the federal government’s American Rescue Plan, which included a third phase of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funding.
The consolidated school district was allocated nearly $35.5 million from that third phase of funding. In order to receive these funds, districts were required to develop plans for returning to in-person classroom instruction, which the consolidated district had developed earlier this summer.
“At this time, our students are expected to come to school each day. We want to assure parents that we are implementing safety protocols at each school to mitigate the spread of COVID-19,” Brown said.
The superintendent added that students and their families should follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidance on mitigating the spread of COVID-19 and that any positive cases should be reported to the district as soon as possible. She also encouraged parents to register their students with their respective schools if they have not already done so.
“Our students have been away from the physical buildings for quite some time. We are eager to work with all students to address learning loss as quickly as possible and help get them back on track to meeting and exceeding grade-level academic expectations,” she said.
“Failure to register and require their children to attend school may result in their children struggling to master academic content and/or failing a course or grade.”
nContact Gerard Edic at 581-7239 or gedic@gwcommonwealth.com.
