Athens and Logan: How are local schools doing during the pandemic?

by Harold Lane

Last year schools shut down unexpectedly with no plan for how students would attend school. This led to an unorganized online school system that was lacking compared to real in-person school. This year, however, schools have a plan for reopening such as all online, partly online, and full in-person.

Local schools have adopted a variety of models and these have changed throughout the year, but how are these schools doing? Two schools to consider are Athens High School And Logan-Hocking School District.

At the beginning of this year, students at Athens City School District had a choice to do school fully online or do part of their school in-person. Partway through the first semester, some students started returning for two days a week either, in cohort A or B.

At Athens High School at this time, there are five active student cases, five active staff cases, and 16 people who had it but recovered. Athens High School has around 47 staff and 763 students. This means that around three percent of all people in Athens have had coronavirus so far.

Principal Chad Springer in an interview said that “I believe that our Covid-19 protocols are effective and we are adapting the plan as more information becomes available.”

The covid protocols at Athens High School, while not perfect, are still good considering most recent studies of school-aged children show that around 1-3 percent of them have gotten Covid. Springer has also said,” The cases were identified as having occurred outside of the district and school.”

Logan High School, unlike Athens, is doing in-person learning with some restrictions placed on certain classes.

Monte Bainter, a member of Logan’s return to the school committee, says, “I feel we are doing the best we can. This is new for all of us and we learn and make changes as we experience more cases.”

Overall Logan has had 39 staff cases and 25 student cases. This means that around 5 percent of Logan’s school population has had Covid. This is a bit above the average for Ohio schools, however, it’s still good for all in-person learning.

As far as the future goes, Bainter has said, “We are prepared and I communicated to the community the plan if we need to go remote.”

Both schools have done a satisfactory job to stop the spread of Covid, however, with cases in the US going up it’s possible that the school cases will change and their plans will evolve.