The high school in Georgia that found itself at the center of an uproar after students tweeted photographs showing crowded hallways has now decided to switch to virtual learning, at least temporarily, according to a report by CNN.
As Mediaite reported earlier this month, two students at North Paulding High School were suspended for posting the tweets and photos, showing hallways crowded with students changing classes and a low percentage of students wearing masks. The school originally stood by their decision to suspend the students, but later reconsidered after major online backlash and revoked the suspensions.
Sunday afternoon, CNN’s Jim Acosta introduced reporter Natasha Chen to explain the announcement about the school’s new policy, calling it “startling news.”
Chen said that Paulding County Schools Superintendent Brian Otott had sent a letter to families whose students attended that school, and CNN had obtained a copy of the letter. The letter said that on this coming Monday and Tuesday, the students would be “staying at home doing virtual learning,” to give the district and the school time to “figure out their next plan,” and they would tell the families on Tuesday whether virtual learning would continue.
The school’s original plan, Chen reported, was to have all the students in-class three days a week Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, and home two days a week on Thursdays and Fridays. That was what happened during their first week of the new school
The superintendent’s first reaction to the controversy was to acknowledge that the photographs of the crowded halls did look “bad”, but added that the “full context” of those photos is that may be what it looks like between classes in a school with more than 2,000 students but it was only for a five-minute period, and the risk for transmitting Covid-19 increased when someone was within six feet of a sick person for about 15 minutes.
However, over the weekend, the school’s principal informed families that at least six students and there staff members had tested positive, and more positive cases might come soon, since several people who had been exposed were still waiting for test results.
Otott’s letter said that the entire campus was going to be disinfected and the district planned to consult with the county public health department to decide how to proceed.
Other districts in this Metro Atlanta area had already reported troubles, such Cherokee County having several hundred students and staff under quarantine, and Gwinnett County, Georgia’s largest school district, having a large number of staff testing positive or having to quarantine, even thought Gwinnett schools had only been doing prep so far.
Watch the above video, via CNN.