Part 1, Effects on Students and Staff of the Pocahontas Schools Virus Shutdown

To better understand the impact of the current Coronavirus of the Pocahontas County schools, we are presenting a two-part story in which we discuss these impacts with School Superintendent Terrence Beam.

Mr. Beam, with the virus closing our schools, where do we stand with providing meals to our students?

“Well, actually we are serving breakfast and lunch to our students” said Beam. “We have three sites where we are dispersing our food from -Hillsboro, Green Bank and Marlinton Elementary School. All of our cooks are working from those three sites to prepare meals to send out on our busses or are available there for people to come by and pick up if they can do that. But, most of our food is being delivered on our school busses.”

“Our busses are being manned by our volunteer teachers and some of our service personnel to help disperse the food to our students. Our first day, it seemed to work really well. We have had a few minor glitches, but I think all of our kids are getting the opportunity to get fed. We are going to follow-up on how our food delivery is going and make any alterations we need to do going forward.”

Are the teachers still being paid”

“Yes, everyone is still being paid for their jobs” replied Beam. “They are on a two-hundred day contract. These days are not considered days off, even though the first three days the teachers have been given the latitude to stay home, and I want to touch on that a little bit.”

“We had a Superintendents’ meeting in Charleston on Thursday and Friday, and also on Sunday, and the Governor decided that they could prepare lessons and grade papers and get grade cards done and things like that from home for the first three days while we were preparing the food distribution and getting our buildings cleaned and so they will be reporting to work on Thursday at this point. This was not a county decision; it was a directive from the Governor and the State Superintendent of Schools.”

“Our teachers were a little bit more prepared than most. On Thursday (March 12^th) I sent out an email to my principals because I was at the state superintendents’ meetings and was hearing these conversations, and had a sneaky suspicion that something major was going to come down on Friday (March 13^th) -which it turned out it did. So, on Thursday our principals knew to alert their staff to get snow-packets ready on Friday to send additional work home with the students. We already had five snow-packets out in the community in case we had snow days, which, thankfully we’ve not had. But, we prepared two extra weeks of snow packets to send out on Friday (the last day of school before the shutdown,) so we are a little bit ahead of the game there. But, depending on the length of this stoppage, we’ll be preparing more and more virtual or on-line kind of lessons and other assignments.”

“People ask me ‘how are we going to get our snow packets back to the schools?’ Well, our suggestion is when they finish a snow packet -when they pick up their meals, they can simply give it to the drivers or the people that’s up on the bus, and they can bring the snow packets back to school. We’re concerned about handling the paperwork and we are still trying to work through that. But we don’t want people coming to the schools and delivering those kinds of things. We want to keep the traffic in and out of the schools to a minimum, so that’s how we are doing the instruction.”

What other concerns about the students are you addressing?

“One of the other things we really needed to think about is the medical needs of our students” said Beam. “Mrs. Friel, our School Nurse was here on Sunday afternoon (March 15^th) when we had our staff meeting with our principals and our directors, and she’s been directed to follow-up with our students that have the most sensitive medical issues to make sure they are doing OK. If parents need to come by and get medication for them, they can do that. They can’t come in the building, but either our nurses or our LPNs or the people who have the ability to disperse the medication from each school, will simply deliver those out to the vehicles to those parents. We are trying to make sure the medical needs of our students are met. The Youth Health Services is actually going to see students at the high school, because their building is outside in the annex, not in the main building, and Green Bank’s is also outside in a different building. So, as long as they are not coming directly into our main buildings, those services can still be provided. Community Care is also involved, and I am sure they are absolutely swamped with people coming to see them.”

What’s the reason you don’t want people coming into the buildings?

“It was just a kind of directive we got at our superintendents; meetings that we want to try and keep the traffic down as low as possible while this is going on” answered Beam. “We’re trying to clean and sanitize our buildings, so the more people that come in and out, you never know what kind of condition they’re gonna come in. They may not even realize that they are infected with this coronavirus or just a common cold or flu.  We’re just trying to eliminate that possibility if we can.”

Be sure to listen for part 2 of this interview where Beam answers more of our questions about the effects of this shutdown

To better understand the impact of the current Coronavirus of the Pocahontas County schools, we are presenting a two-part story in which we discuss these impacts with School Superintendent Terrence Beam.

Mr. Beam, with the virus closing our schools, where do we stand with providing meals to our students?

“Well, actually we are serving breakfast and lunch to our students” said Beam. “We have three sites where we are dispersing our food from -Hillsboro, Green Bank and Marlinton Elementary School. All of our cooks are working from those three sites to prepare meals to send out on our busses or are available there for people to come by and pick up if they can do that. But, most of our food is being delivered on our school busses.”

“Our busses are being manned by our volunteer teachers and some of our service personnel to help disperse the food to our students. Our first day, it seemed to work really well. We have had a few minor glitches, but I think all of our kids are getting the opportunity to get fed. We are going to follow-up on how our food delivery is going and make any alterations we need to do going forward.”

Are the teachers still being paid”

“Yes, everyone is still being paid for their jobs” replied Beam. “They are on a two-hundred day contract. These days are not considered days off, even though the first three days the teachers have been given the latitude to stay home, and I want to touch on that a little bit.”

“We had a Superintendents’ meeting in Charleston on Thursday and Friday, and also on Sunday, and the Governor decided that they could prepare lessons and grade papers and get grade cards done and things like that from home for the first three days while we were preparing the food distribution and getting our buildings cleaned and so they will be reporting to work on Thursday at this point. This was not a county decision; it was a directive from the Governor and the State Superintendent of Schools.”

“Our teachers were a little bit more prepared than most. On Thursday (March 12^th) I sent out an email to my principals because I was at the state superintendents’ meetings and was hearing these conversations, and had a sneaky suspicion that something major was going to come down on Friday (March 13^th) -which it turned out it did. So, on Thursday our principals knew to alert their staff to get snow-packets ready on Friday to send additional work home with the students. We already had five snow-packets out in the community in case we had snow days, which, thankfully we’ve not had. But, we prepared two extra weeks of snow packets to send out on Friday (the last day of school before the shutdown,) so we are a little bit ahead of the game there. But, depending on the length of this stoppage, we’ll be preparing more and more virtual or on-line kind of lessons and other assignments.”

“People ask me ‘how are we going to get our snow packets back to the schools?’ Well, our suggestion is when they finish a snow packet -when they pick up their meals, they can simply give it to the drivers or the people that’s up on the bus, and they can bring the snow packets back to school. We’re concerned about handling the paperwork and we are still trying to work through that. But we don’t want people coming to the schools and delivering those kinds of things. We want to keep the traffic in and out of the schools to a minimum, so that’s how we are doing the instruction.”

What other concerns about the students are you addressing?

“One of the other things we really needed to think about is the medical needs of our students” said Beam. “Mrs. Friel, our School Nurse was here on Sunday afternoon (March 15^th) when we had our staff meeting with our principals and our directors, and she’s been directed to follow-up with our students that have the most sensitive medical issues to make sure they are doing OK. If parents need to come by and get medication for them, they can do that. They can’t come in the building, but either our nurses or our LPNs or the people who have the ability to disperse the medication from each school, will simply deliver those out to the vehicles to those parents. We are trying to make sure the medical needs of our students are met. The Youth Health Services is actually going to see students at the high school, because their building is outside in the annex, not in the main building, and Green Bank’s is also outside in a different building. So, as long as they are not coming directly into our main buildings, those services can still be provided. Community Care is also involved, and I am sure they are absolutely swamped with people coming to see them.”

What’s the reason you don’t want people coming into the buildings?

“It was just a kind of directive we got at our superintendents; meetings that we want to try and keep the traffic down as low as possible while this is going on” answered Beam. “We’re trying to clean and sanitize our buildings, so the more people that come in and out, you never know what kind of condition they’re gonna come in. They may not even realize that they are infected with this coronavirus or just a common cold or flu.  We’re just trying to eliminate that possibility if we can.”

Be sure to listen for part 2 of this interview where Beam answers more of our questions about the effects of this shutdown