Greene County Career Center will have a new schedule starting in November

Juniors currently take labs on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Next quarter they will take a full day of labs on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

All other instruction will be done remotely. Students are only to be interacting with the other people in their labs, including eating lunch with the people in their lab.

Deskins said they had hoped to start fully in-person in the second quarter, but then Greene County was upgraded to a “red level” in regards to the number of cases, and the board decided against it.

“I am a firm believer that students do their best learning physically in front of a teacher,” Deskins said. “Our students are traditionally more hands-on learners, so we are working hard to provide additional support to those students that don’t like or struggle with the remote portion of the curriculum.”

Deskins said on days that students are in-person in labs, they can also go to an instructor for help in their remote classes. All the instructors are teaching from the building, even if it is remotely.

About 730 juniors and seniors attend the Greene County Career Center. The majority of those students come from Xenia, Fairborn, Greeneview and Beavercreek high schools. The career center opened a new $70 million facility this August.

Deskins said the career center has had one positive student case. There has also been one teacher who tested positive for coronavirus, he said. That caused both of the labs taught by that teacher to be canceled while the teacher quarantined. Closing down that lab allowed the other labs to keep teaching safely, he said.

“It’s a challenge and a balance, because we want to keep kids safe, but we know their best learning is done here in the classroom," Deskins said. “It is especially important for us as a career center to be safe because we can’t be fully remote. You can’t take a part a tractor engine from your couch at home.”

The Greene County Career Center hopes to go back fully in-person starting in January, Deskins said. This would still keep students in one cohort or block so that they’re interacting with a limited number of people.