Blessing said as district officials started planning for next week, they were afraid they wouldn’t be able to safely open school and have the teacher coverage and consistency they needed for their students.
“We started running through the needs for next week based on the amount of staff that has COVID or needs to quarantine and our numbers for substitutes were getting really high,” Blessing said. “On Tuesday, at the point where we had our discussion, we needed 30 subs.”
Blessing said the district “limped along” before Thanksgiving, filling about 18-20 sub positions a day, with other staff juggling to cover any other openings. She said that’s been a burden on teachers and staff.
“We’re just heartbroken. We were able to be in school almost 11 weeks full time,” Blessing said. “But we don’t see a decline happening based on the medical trends. We’re hoping after this break we have some light in January.”
Miamisburg High School has been using a mixed in-person/online system since Nov. 9, while the other schools were fully online. Like other local districts, Miamisburg has had a separate fully online option for students.
Now all students will be fully online through Dec. 18, then will take the regularly scheduled two-week Christmas break. On Jan. 4, classes will resume in online form, and if all goes according to plan, students who desire to attend in-person will return to school buildings on Jan. 11.
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