Schools in Kanawha County are seeing positive cases of COVID-19.
West Virginia State University, which restarted in-person classes Aug. 10, has 15 active cases among students and eight among staff, said Scott Woodard, the university’s interim provost and vice president for academic affairs.
There were only three positive cases identified before classes started, from the required testing of all university students and staff before the semester began.
Woodard said he can’t tell how or where these new 23 were infected.
Students and staff are required to wear masks on campus, and they’re screened for symptoms before entering buildings, he said. He said these positive cases weren’t identified through random testing.
“These are students who just developed symptoms or informed us that they may have been in contact with someone who tested positive, so we encouraged those students to get tested,” he said.
He noted Facebook pictures of off-campus events.
“We know that some of our campus community are engaging in activities on the weekend that are not safe,” he said. “There will be plenty of parties when this is over.”
He estimated there are about 1,700 in-person students currently, and they can choose to view classes online if they wish.
Also, an adult student at Carver Career and Technical Education Center, a Kanawha County school district vocational school that teaches adults and teens, has tested positive.
Briana Warner, spokeswoman for the district, wrote in an email that the student was in a heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) program, and told the teacher of the positive result Sunday.
“That program has moved to eLearning for two weeks and the classroom is being cleaned,” Warner wrote. “Notification of a positive test was sent to the class and all current adult programs.”
She wrote that the class was socially distanced and wearing masks and “practicing core grouping.” The county health department will contact those who had “direct contact” with any positive case, the district said.
Warner and Woodard said they haven’t heard that any of these students or staff are seriously ill.
On the state’s color-coded school reopening map, Kanawha’s average new daily cases is close to the orange level.
If Kanawha is orange come the week of Sept. 8, it won’t be allowed to reopen classrooms for its children and teens, like other West Virginia counties. Kanawha is averaging 9.54 new daily cases per 100,000 residents, just short of the threshold of 10 for orange.
Meanwhile, down south in Logan County, the state’s only county colored red, that district is requiring all employees to come into schools starting tomorrow to prepare for the upcoming school year.
Logan is averaging 33 new daily cases per 100,000 residents, well past the 25 threshold for red. The Logan Board of Education has already voted to only do remote learning through the end of September, said Patricia Lucas, the county’s schools superintendent.
But Lucas said teachers need to show up to be trained to use wall-mounted touch panels. Lisa Teeters, the technology director there, said they are ViewSonic ViewBoards that help teachers interact online with the students, including allowing them to be taught in small groups, plus they record lessons for them.
“It’s nothing that is mobile,” Teeters said of the screens.
Lucas said employees will be required to wear masks, unless they’re in their classrooms alone, and much training can be done online while in the schools.
“I just think that with what we have in place now and the teachers being able to be in the classrooms, the quality — and I think our teachers did the best they could possibly do in the spring — but the quality of the instruction will be enhanced with the type of technology that they have within their classrooms,” she said.
August 25, 2020 at 05:55AM
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/education/wvsu-sees-23-positive-cases-in-first-2-weeks-code-red-logan-county-bringing-staff/article_0fcb0235-ecf8-5581-9c5a-519fd7a78a5e.html
WVSU sees 23 positive cases in first 2 weeks, code red Logan County bringing staff back - Charleston Gazette-Mail
https://news.google.com/search?q=Red&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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