Many Districts Pivot To Distance Learning Due To COVID Cases, Staff Absences

Several school districts across Green Country are going back to virtual learning this week.

Jenks, Broken Arrow, Bixby, Muskogee, Pawhuska, are just some of the districts affected.

Rob Loeber with Jenks Public Schools said the decision was made because of a major staffing shortage due to COVID-19.

“The decision is really just based on our staffing capacity. So since the new semester has started we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of cases," he said.

Jenks Public Schools says west elementary, west intermediate and all students in 9th through 12th grades are going virtual for a week.

Chris Payne with Union Public Schools says all students in 6th through 12th grade will be learning from home for the rest of the week.

“By this morning we had 174 teacher absences, which is a really high, high number," Payne said.

It isn't as simple as calling in a substitute because they are also calling out sick.

“With a substitute pool that’s already you know somewhat diminished, it’s very hard to provide adequate coverage," Loeber said.

“Hopefully now we can take some of our available resources with subs and personnel, reassign those to other school sites in our district and keep those sites open throughout the rest of the week.”

Loeber and Payne both say keeping elementary students in school is a priority - since they have the most trouble switching to virtual learning.