Pickens County School District lays out future school plans

PICKENS COUNTY, AL. (WCBI) —  Some changes are set to begin within the coming weeks for Pickens County students.

Superintendent Jamie Chapman announced a staggered grade level phase-in Monday.

“Bring in pre-K through three on September 28,” said Chapman. “That will be for two weeks. We will monitor our numbers and make sure that things are as good as can be and we are not seeing a significant increase or rise of COVID positive cases in our system. And if everything is going well, two weeks later October 13 we will bring in grades four to six.”

And if this plan continues to work, grades seven to eight will then be next on the list.

But what would happen next if an outbreak was to happen?

“If numbers rise rapidly we could go back to staggered,” said Chapman. “If all of a sudden we see a big increase in a local school population or across our county, that got up to the 20 percent number, I told our people with this being so new and us not knowing, we probably will look at a 15 and 20 percent number if we see a rapid increase, that you know we would just shut down.”

If shutdown was to happen, Chapman said students and faculty will then have to communicate virtually.

“Everybody is now familiar with the virtual platform. So if we have to do a shutdown everybody has their own personal Chromebook. Everybody has been exposed to login virtually and we feel like we will be able to, you know, continue the process of educating our kids the best that we can in the event that the system had to shut down.”

As for the high schools, Chapman said they will remain on their A and B schedule until the end of the first semester.