Two staff cases confirmed for Pendleton County schools

Supertendent Joe Buerkley said in a letter to parents on Tuesday, November 3, a kindergarten instructional assistant at Northern Elementary had received a positive Covid-19 test.

The next day, he posted a second letter that a preschool instructional assistant in Preschool at Southern Elementary had also received a positive test.

Due to student and staff quarantines, the Northern Elementary kindergarten instruction was switched to a virtual format beginning November 5-13.

The letter said, "There will be no in-person learning for Northern Elementary kindergarten students during this time."

It did not affect kindergarten at Sourthern Elementary.

On Wednesday, November 4, Southern Elementary's preschool was affected but would remain with in-person instruction for Southern Elementary preschool.

It did say the staff member was working with Three Rivers Health Department to provide contact tracing and Three Rivers would be in contact with the appropriate parents.

It continued that Southern Elementary would be contacting impacted parents but added, "If you are not contacted by school administration then you are not impacted by this situation."

Superintendent Joe Buerkley told the Falmouth Outlook in an interview on the first three weeks of in-person education and before the Southern Elementary incident was reported, "We are still short in the area of substitutes.  This can and will impact us as we move forward.  A prime example was our situation at Northern Elementary.  Once all of our kindergarten instructional assistants were quarantined we were forced to move to a virtual option because we only have one available instructional assistant substitute district-wide.  Hopefully, this situation will continue to improve and we can avoid incidents that require a large number of substitutes at one time."

The full interview about how the first three weeks of in-person education has went will be in the Tuesday, November 10 edition of Falmouth Outlook.