MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Monday, March 1, was supposed to be the first day of a phased return to in-person learning for public elementary school kids in Monongalia County. However, local flooding hindered that plan.
Monongalia County Schools’ Superintendent, Dr. Eddie Campbell, said Pre-k through fifth-grade students couldn’t return because it was not feasible. Although there was no damage to school buildings, other effects of the flooding delayed Monday’s return.
The reason we didn’t get back into school today was because we had a significant number of roads in the county that had standing water or were covered with water that had spilled out of the banks of the creeks and the streams. In conditions like that, when we had as many roads as we were dealing with, at that time of the day we just elected that it wasn’t going to be safe to run buses. And so we postponed our start. We went remote today, but we just didn’t have the complete Pre-k through five return, in-person returns, that we were planning to have.
Dr. Eddie Campbell – Superintendent
Campbell said students will now return Tuesday, March 2. There will be no other changes to the original phased return plan, the superintendent said.
This means on Wednesday, March 3, middle schools, which includes grades six through eight, will begin their phased return. Students in this group will have three days of in-person classes that week.
When they return the following Monday, March 8, they will start their first full week of in-person of learning. That is also the week high schools in the county will move away from the blended model of in-person and online learning. They, too, will begin having in-person learning five days a week starting March 8.
You can learn more about the phased return to in-person learning from the Monongalia Co. Board of Education’s initial announcement.
