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Bartlesville Public Schools Superintendent Chuck McCauley appeared Wednesday on COMMUNITY CONNECTION and addressed why the schools are in remote learning mode despite not hitting the set metrics and announced that it his hope that classes will resume on January 4 with in-person learning.

 

For several months the district has tracked its staffing, the number and frequency of site-level positive cases and close contact quarantines, and overall site absenteeism. Those metrics are used to determine if a site would need to transition to Distance Learning.

 

McCauley backed up what Granger Meador, who heads up the Bartlesville Public Schools Pandemic Response Committee, said at Monday's school board meeting that they had been watching a surge of cases just before Thanksgiving which was followed by a downturn and then an uptick in case that he says was straining our hospitals.

 

The issue concerning some parents is that the hospitals have not been in Tier 4 status, which would have been a metric that would have triggered remote learning. This is something Meador acknowledged on Monday. McCauley and Meador said out of an abundance of caution, the focus then shifted to the number of available ICU beds and that they gave parents nearly a week's notice that this could happen.

 

On a more positive note, McCauley said his desire is to have the schools reopen on January 4 with in-person learning.

 

Sports are on hold for right now. MacCauley says practices can resume the day after Christmas and that attendence at games moving forward will be better managed to curb the potential sprad of COVID-19.