Some schools in SC districts go virtual as COVID decimates staff, substitutes
With more than 100 staff members out of work Monday and not enough substitutes to fill their places, one South Carolina school district is sending its high schools to virtual learning for the rest of the week. And on Tuesday, a Midlands elementary school announced it was going virtual as well, as COVID-19 cases surge throughout the state.
Oconee County high schools — Seneca, Walhalla and West-Oak — are operating on an e-learning schedule through Friday, the school district said Monday. And Chapin Elementary School announced Tuesday that all its classes will go virtual this week due to “a high number of students and staff impacted by COVID-19 isolation and quarantine.”
“Today, the district was only able to fill 51% of staff absences with a substitute,” Oconee school district human resources director Al LeRoy said in a news release Monday. “This left us with 58 vacancies that other school employees are having to cover.”
A large number of COVID-19 cases have spread among Oconee County students and staff, leading to the staffing shortage, the district said. As of Monday, Oconee County schools reported 213 COVID-19 cases in the past seven days, according to the district’s online COVID dashboard.
The same issue is plaguing a growing number of schools across the state, according to Ryan Brown, a spokesman for the S.C. Department of Education.
“We really stress closing individual schools, not districts, as staffing is the predominant rationale,” Brown said. While there are teachers out due to COVID, Brown said, “it hasn’t been really teachers (driving school closures). It’s been bus drivers, the custodial staff, the food service workers.”
Some two dozen individual schools across the state have shifted to virtual learning so far this week, along with the entire Bamberg 1 and Bamberg 2 school districts.
Oconee County said it opted to send only its high school students to virtual instruction because the older students do not need the same level of supervision at home as younger students and because high school students tend to be better equipped to learn virtually. Some staff from the high schools can be used to help address staffing shortages at middle and elementary schools in the meantime, the district said.
“We are fully aware that this is not ideal,” Oconee schools Superintendent Michael Thorsland said in a statement. “However, we feel like this gives us the best chance to keep as many students face-to-face as possible. We are also aware that this may not be the last of the measures we have to take. Please bear with us as we navigate and do our best for our students, families and staff during this surge in cases.”
High school students are expected to return to their classrooms in-person next Tuesday, Jan. 18, after the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday.
In the meantime, the school district said that athletics will continue to operate normally and that most students’ classes will continue to be held at their normal times. Students without internet access will be able to complete missed assignments upon returning to school.
Other South Carolina schools are making a virtual shift this week, as an unprecedented number of COVID-19 infections, driven by the omicron variant, sweeps across the state.
In Richland 2, Dent Middle School is virtual until next Tuesday. And in Lexington 1, River Bluff High School also is operating on an e-learning schedule this week.
“We made this decision based on the school’s percentage of staff who are positive, symptomatic and quarantined,” Lexington 1 school district Superintendent Greg Little and and River Bluff Principal Jacob Smith said in an email to River Bluff parents.
The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control has provided some guidelines for when individual schools may consider going virtual, which include if a school is unable to maintain operations with its available staff, if 30% of students in a school or grade level are absent due to COVID-19, or if 5-10% of the student body is in isolation simultaneously after testing positive for COVID-19.
This story was originally published January 11, 2022 at 10:26 AM.
