“We heard a lot of positives from all of our groups,” Superintendent Paul Otten said. “Everywhere we went today, people were wearing their masks — staff and students. Obviously the biggest thing for us is we have to be vigilant about that. … We have to remind ourselves that we could be our worst enemy by not being vigilant.”
Otten said about a quarter of Beavercreek students are doing fully online school. So splitting the in-person group in half the first two days means buildings are only about 37% of normal attendance. He said that helped schools and students work through all of the safety procedures more easily.
“The real test will be Day 3 when we have them all in,” he said.
Centerville schools started their fully online first quarter Monday and posted several photos of teachers working with students live over the internet. Centerville was one of the districts that had some issues with the Zoom online platform Monday, as it suffered broad outages.
A few parents posted online that they couldn’t access some classes. Centerville officials said the district’s issue was “a filtering problem with the school-issued devices” that was resolved later in the day.
Oakwood Superintendent Kyle Ramey called Monday “a great day” with excitement from both students and employees to finally be back after five-plus months off. For the immediate future, Oakwood has in-person students split into morning and afternoon groups.
“Things that we worked on all summer long have worked today,” Ramey said. “They work on paper, but when you put the bodies and students in, and it still works, that’s great.”
Ramey said the schools were able to accomplish their cleaning protocols between the morning and afternoon sessions, and had little trouble with mask-wearing or hallway crowds.
He said the junior high kids got bunched up in a hallway at dismissal, but the issue was better in the afternoon and will be monitored on Tuesday.
Vandalia-Butler Superintendent Rob O’Leary said the first day — which is a challenge for schools even in normal years — was “very good,” and he thanked parents, students and staff.
“Our staff did a great job getting the day started and easing students back into the routines, including teaching new habits with signage in hallways for traffic movement, signage in cafeterias for seating assignments, and arrival and dismissal routines,” he said.
Otten, who drove one of Beavercreek’s school bus routes Monday afternoon, said a few issues the district will look into in the coming days deal with busing and dropoff/pickup. With 25% of students going online, and numerous other families choosing to drop their kids off rather than have them ride the bus, the district may be able to condense routing so kids aren’t on the bus as long.
He also said schools will have to examine parent dropoff/pickup procedures because the volume of cars on school grounds is more than normal.
But there was time for a little humor on the first day, too. Otten praised Beavercreek High School Principal Dale Wren, a district veteran, who worked extremely hard to make sure all of the health and safety protocols were set up properly early Monday morning.
“He said, we’re OK, our barriers are all up, we’re all ready,” Otten said. “And then at the time the first bell should have rang, there was no bell. He was so focused on COVID that we never set the bell schedule.”
About the Author
