ENON — The Ohio National Guard is working with Gov. Mike DeWine’s administration to see if the military would be able to assist in transporting students to school at districts facing bus driver staffing issues due to COVID-19, DeWine said during a news conference Tuesday.
The announcement comes after a positive COVID-19 case among a school bus driver made it so the Greenon Local School district unable to provide school transportation Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday, according to district Superintendent Darrin Knapke.
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“We obviously are looking at the licensing issue,” DeWine said. “We’re looking at manpower situations.”
DeWine said he expected to have an update on the possibility of the National Guard assisting in the next few days, but cautioned that he didn’t “know if we have a viable solution for these schools.”
“It’s a problem. We recognize it’s a problem,” DeWine said.
Due to the transportation issues, Greenon will close schools Wednesday while contact tracing is completed, Knapke said in a statement posted to the district’s website.
“We received word this morning after the school day began that we will be unable to continue providing transportation in the short term due to quarantines. We had a bus driver test positive for COVID-19 and are contact tracing our transportation staff at this time to determine how this will affect our transportation availability,” Knapke said.
Students who typically ride buses home will need to be picked up at their school Tuesday. However, students that attend other schools but ride Greenon buses will still be transported home Tuesday.
“If you need to make arrangements for someone else to pick up your child, please contact the school. Any students who are not picked up at the end of the school day will be supervised in the cafeteria until they are picked up,” Knapke said in the statement.
All evening activities, games, and practices have also been cancelled for Tuesday night.
“Right now, we hope to be able to resume school later this week, but we encourage families to prepare for the possibility of a short period of distance learning, self-transportation for all families, or school closure,” Knapke said.
“We will update families as soon as possible, likely during the day tomorrow, Wednesday, September 22, with our plans moving forward.”
We’ll continue to update this story as we learn more.
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