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by Hannah McPherson1 view·Updated Aug 25, 2021
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  1. Hey, I'm Hannah Mcpherson and I'm going to be talking
  2. about a small town nearby.
  3. That is in the news.
  4. Mhm So when are small towns featured on the evening
  5. news. Typically it's when something is wrong and that is
  6. what's happening in nearby Lamar County.
  7. WSB Tv Channel two reported this headline.
  8. If you'll notice these word choices, Georgia school district shuts
  9. down for two weeks because of skyrocketing rocketing Covid 19
  10. cases that gets your attention.
  11. Fox five Atlanta reported Lamar County schools pausing for two
  12. weeks due to impacts of covid 19 surge.
  13. So let's take a closer look, why did the school
  14. system close?
  15. COVID-19 created the perfect storm.
  16. The school system has been dedicated to transparency and posting
  17. on facebook and they released this statement from the superintendent
  18. and it says it has become almost impossible for us
  19. to ensure all students can get to school and home
  20. each day while providing quality instruction in a healthy environment.
  21. The data that was posted about the school is that
  22. it's going to be a two week pause from now
  23. until Labor day.
  24. Lamar County has the fourth highest rate of new cases
  25. in Georgia.
  26. There were 36 staff members and 600 plus students out
  27. daily with Covid.
  28. They are going to choose.
  29. They are going to offer now a virtual option from
  30. now until uh, fall break.
  31. They had not offered a virtual option previously.
  32. And then of course parents can request meals if they
  33. need that assistance.
  34. Yeah. So let's talk about Lamar County.
  35. The stats of Lamar County, they serve 2,692 students.
  36. They have 100 and 72 teachers on staff.
  37. Now that doesn't include pair pros, nutrition staff and bus
  38. drivers. And then once again, at the time of closure,
  39. they had 600 Or more students absent daily and that's
  40. not just positive cases.
  41. That's also quarantine and possible exposure.
  42. And they have 36 teachers that were absent.
  43. Yeah. So I made up a little timeline.
  44. They began school on July 29, on august the fourth
  45. Following week, they posted their first covid numbers report On
  46. August 16, they announced that they had three bus routes
  47. that would not run all week because of bus driver
  48. shortages. And then that was a Monday?
  49. And then that Friday is when they announced that school
  50. would be paused for two weeks.
  51. Mhm. All right.
  52. And then you can see this is just where Lamar
  53. County is.
  54. It's about an hour south of Atlanta.
  55. The name of the town is Barnesville.
  56. And the county demographics, it is um, 56% White, 35%
  57. black. Um, 6% identifies multiracial and 3% Hispanic.
  58. Uh, they are 42% identified as economically disadvantaged.
  59. So, let's talk about the difficulties.
  60. What's the big deal about this school system and why
  61. are they struggling?
  62. Why is it a big deal that they had to
  63. shut down.
  64. This is a numbers game.
  65. First of all, they did not have enough staff.
  66. They were at the point where in the mornings they
  67. had teachers that were out, so they were trying to
  68. cover classes, They were getting bus drivers off of the
  69. buses to come in and monitor the students during the
  70. school day.
  71. They did not have enough bus drivers.
  72. The principle of the primary school was driving a bus
  73. route, there were several football coaches who have CPL licenses
  74. that were driving buses and it just became an overwhelming
  75. um responsibility to try to make sure that these Children
  76. were safe.
  77. Yeah, second there was just not offending.
  78. There wasn't an offending for hand sanitizer and cleaning supplies
  79. that were needed, just the basic daily uh sanitation items.
  80. They weren't, they didn't have them.
  81. Um And third there was not a lot of community
  82. support for the mask mandate and social distancing.
  83. The vaccination rate in the community is extremely low and
  84. that just kind of added to um the possibility of
  85. the spread.
  86. So on top of this compounding issues here we have
  87. a picture of the internet service in Lamar County.
  88. Why did we pause?
  89. Why did they pause?
  90. Why not Go virtual for two weeks here we have
  91. the internet, you'll see the dark orange areas are where
  92. broadband internet is available and the a large majority of
  93. the county is in this beautiful light yellow cover coverage.
  94. That means there is no broadband service in the area.
  95. To the problems with this.
  96. They stopped for two weeks.
  97. Virtual Learning Participation for the 2020, 2021 school year was
  98. minimal. The parents cited reasons such as there is no
  99. internet and there was no adult supervision.
  100. The parents were saying that the older Children were watching
  101. the younger Children and these older Children had their own
  102. school work to complete and the younger Children could not
  103. be forced or encouraged or monitor to the point where
  104. they would complete their work.
  105. So moving forward, what does this mean?
  106. The school system doesn't know there's a required seat time
  107. And I think in the state of Georgia is 175
  108. days. So the kids are missing 10 days of instruction
  109. through these covid days.
  110. Is that gonna be waived?
  111. Is there going to be a waiver?
  112. That's place like there was last year and the year
  113. before we don't know are the teachers going to be
  114. paid? They don't know are they gonna have to make
  115. up those days, are they going to be allowed to
  116. work extra hours in the afternoons to make up those
  117. days? They don't know if the pauls is continued and
  118. they do go virtual.
  119. Did the Children have devices where they sent home with
  120. devices? I believe that they had gotten 1-1 devices by
  121. the end of last school year but they were not
  122. sent home.
  123. The elementary and the primary school did not send these
  124. devices home because it was a pause, it's not a
  125. stop and then if it is and becomes virtual.
  126. Well, the school provides hotspots again, the Verizon hotspots were
  127. used last year and the school did not provide them.
  128. They were the parents were told that they needed to
  129. access internet at the library and local restaurants and things
  130. like that that provide free internet.
  131. Yeah. So who's responsible for this?
  132. If you do not have the funds to pay for
  133. internet in your home and you're being told that you
  134. need to go to the library to sit or go
  135. to a parking lot near a school provided hub.
  136. We have buses that drove around that had a hub
  137. in them and then you could access the internet sitting
  138. in a in the parking lot around the bus.
  139. So now parents are responsible for doing this in the
  140. evenings after they get home from work.
  141. Where does this funding come from?
  142. Should this be a federal grant that is used to
  143. purchase hotspots?
  144. Hopefully this is going to end soon, but we need
  145. to be prepared.
  146. And internet needs to be discussed to the point where
  147. that we understand it is a utility, it is not
  148. a luxury any longer.
  149. You must have internet to be able to access the
  150. world around us.
  151. So, you know, small towns on the news usually, unfortunately,
  152. it means there's a problem.
  153. So just lots of questions that are arising because of
  154. these things are happening.
  155. So yeah, let me know if you have any further
  156. questions and we can discuss this a little bit more.
  157. Mhm. All right.
  158. And then I have my references.
  159. She thank you for taking this time with me.