School Schedule

Student in Pickens County will soon be back in the classroom.

But first at five.... student in pickens county will soon be back in the classroom.

The schools superintent has announced a staggered grade level phase-in process.

Wcbi's bobby martinez talked to hime about the new plan and joins us in the studio with more.

So bobby, what should students and parents expect?

Aundrea, superintendent jamie chapman says this plan was put in place due to the steady decrease of covid cases in the county... and is hoping this plan is a stepping stone to having each grade level back in school for traditional learning... creating a plan and sticking to king to it... "we feel like this is the best for us."

That has been the focus moving forward for pickens county school district.

Superintendent jamie chapman says this year has posed several challenges for school across the county because of covid 19..

"like i told a bunch of people.

Whatever your thought on covid are..

You are exactly right because that is your opinion.

And this stuff is so knew nobody has all the answers...so we are just trying to work through it - mitigate it as best as we can so that the reason for our staggered return here.."

So here's how the plan works..

"bring in pre-k through three on september 28.

That will be for a two week.

We will monitor our numbers and make sure that things are as good as can be and we are not seeing a significant increase or rise of covid positive cases in our system.

And if everything is going well two weeks later october 13 we will bring in grades 4 to 6."

And if this plan continues to work... grades 7 to 8 will then be next on the list... but what would happen next if an outbreak was to happen?

"if numbers rise rapidly we could go back to staggered.

If all of a sudden we see a big increase in a local school population or across our county, that got up to the 20% number and i told our people with this being so new and us not knowing, we probably will look at a 15 and 20% number if we see a rapid increase, that you know we would just shut down."

Bridge so if a shutdown was to happen..

Chapman says students and faculty will then have to communicate through here - the computer.... "we've been on a staggered schedule so in the event that we do have to shut down all students the ones that chose the virtual option and the ones that chose the traditional who's been on a hybrid staggered schedule, everybody is now familiar with the virtual platform.

So if we have to do a shut down everybody has their own personal chromebook everybody has been exposed to login virtually and we feel like we will be able to you know continue the process of educating our kids the best that we can in the event that the system had to shut down."

Monitor tag as for the high schoolers - chapman says they will remain on their a and b schedule until the end of the first semester..