PEMBERVILLE – After a sharp rise in coronavirus quarantines, Eastwood Local Schools is returning to a
hybrid schedule.
Superintendent Brent Welker announced in a community-wide email Thursday that the district will back off
of its four-days-a-week schedule for grades 6-12 Tuesday.
Through Thanksgiving, middle school and high school students will return to the schedule they started
school with: attending Tuesday and Thursday or Wednesday and Friday. Monday will continue to be an
online day.
By switching schedules, “we did what we did not want to do, and that was to create instability,” Welker
wrote.
The elementary, which started the year attending four days a week, will continue with that schedule.
The district went off its hybrid scheduled on Oct. 27, less than two weeks ago.
In that time, the number of students in quarantine has increased to 70.
Thirty-eight are related to the two positive cases among students and the remaining 32 are out waiting on
test results after a family member were either systematic or tested positive, he said in an interview
Friday.
The impact of quarantining and isolating students has been disruptive “and has given us reason to pause
and consider our current operating plan,” Welker wrote.
By bringing social distancing back to buses – which is not possible in the current plan – Welker said the
district will have significantly fewer quarantines.
The current cases were through contact tracing in the classrooms and encompass all grades, he said
Friday.
The number of staff under quarantine is six although none have tested positive.
The intent is to keep students on the hybrid model through Thanksgiving, but Welker said there is concern
over December and the holidays and indoor family gatherings.
“We have heard for months that this is a huge concern,” he said.
The board of education will decide at its Nov. 16 meeting on the operating plan for the rest of the
semester.
“We do not want to be bouncing back and forth, so while this is an interim step, we want to make sure
that whatever we do next will be sustainable,” Welker said.
