Northeastern Local Schools goes remote through Friday amid staffing shortage, rising COVID cases

CLARK COUNTY — A Miami Valley school district is going back to virtual learning at some of its buildings.

Hundreds of students in the Northeastern School District in Clark County will learn from home the rest of the week.

School officials said they made the decision after seeing a rise in COVID-19 cases and a shortage of staff.

Billy Keeton, who is a parent at Clark Shawnee Local Schools, said, “My kids like going to school vs. staying at home.”

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Keeton’s kids attend a neighboring school district and he said he hopes they don’t also end up becoming virtual.

“I understand but I still prefer for them to go to school,” he said.” As long as you take your precautions, do everything you’re supposed to do. It’s better off for the kids to be in school vs. being at home.”

Precautions, he said, like wearing masks, which is something Northeastern Schools do not currently require. In a phone interview today with Supt. John P. Kronour, Ph. D., he said a spike in COVID cases is to blame for the decision.

“We’ve seen a little bit of an uptick in COVID numbers but yesterday we saw more of an uptick. And just a lot of kids that we had to send home for illness that could be COVID-related, but we just don’t know.,” Kronour said.

South Vienna Elementary, Rolling Hills Elementary, Northeastern Middle and High School have all be moved to virtual learning.

“We sent a number of kids home and at that point in time, we made the decision to put a few of our buildings on virtual learning, which should help us with the staffing a little,” Kronour said.

The school district’s COVID dashboard shows a total of 32 students tested positive with COVID. School officials said 57 are being quarantined and there are 3 positive cases among the staff.

“It remains to be seen if whether those buildings that are still in are going to be able to remain in if their numbers start to go up mo

re,” Kronour said.

The superintendent said they’ll reevaluate whether to continue remote learning after winter break as well as whether to require masks in school.

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