Watauga County Schools Remain Open While Other Schools Go Remote

Decisions made by Central Office employees and Board of Education Members allowed Watauga Schools to remain open during the Omicron surge.

With COVID cases worsening after the holidays, schools across the nation prepared for the onslaught of cases by closing down. Watauga, like most schools in North Carolina, did not close down.

The decision to close a school system is made by the superintendent, but North Carolina legislators play a role in how schools function as well.

“Last year, the North Carolina legislature passed a law preventing local school systems from returning their entire school district back to remote instruction due to COVID,” said Dr. Scott Elliott, Superintendent of Watauga County Schools.

Despite the legislature preventing entire school systems from shutting down due to COVID, there are ways for other parts of a school system to be closed down.

“What is possible,” said Dr. Elliott, “is that a school superintendent can send an individual class or an individual school into remote instruction, if it’s necessary to prevent a significant outbreak of the virus, or if there are not enough staff to operate the school. But schools must do two things. They must report it immediately within 36 hours to the State Board of Education, and then re-open the classroom or school as soon as there is sufficient staff.”

There are also more ways to prevent the spread of COVID without having to close down schools or classrooms. Much of that planning must be in place prior to a strong COVID outbreak. Watauga County Schools had many preventative measures in place before Omicron arrived that allowed us to remain open.

“It has started with hiring more nurses. Before COVID, we had 6 school nurses, and this year we have 12,” said Dr. Elliott. “So there are enough nurses for one for every school, plus extra nurses to rotate around the schools when there is an extra need. And I think that being able to screen students and contact trace students, and quarantine students, has prevented the spread of the virus in the school.”

Nurses are not the only school personnel necessary to keep schools open. Custodians and classroom teachers, along with community partnerships with local health care providers also helped avoid a return to remote instruction.

“Other things we’ve done are around environmental protection,” said Dr. Elliott. “We purchased extra cleaning equipment, which will spray and kill the virus in rooms where an infected person had been. We invested heavily in hand sanitizer stations and high-quality face masks for staff. The third thing we’ve done, which has been kind of controversial, is we’ve very openly promoted vaccines and vaccinations.”

There were also some unintentional preventions of COVID spread due to our geographical setting and meteorological patterns within Watauga County and the Blue Ridge Mountains.

“All of the schools in other districts that I know have had gone virtual have had to do it because they lack enough staff to keep school open,” said Dr. Elliott. “During the start of the surge of Omicron, all across the state and especially in western North Carolina, we had a very large snowstorm that kept us out of school for a week. And during that time we had a high number of our staff members who became sick, and I think that if we had been in school that week, we might’ve experienced some of the same problems that other school systems do.”