Summer program ends early, district continues plans for school year

The Whitehall summer school program came to an early end last week with students testing positive for Covid-19.

According to Superintendent Hannah Nieskens, the positive cases in the school setting did trigger the Jefferson County Health Department to place 29 students and seven staff members into a 14-day quarantine.

"As a result, the entire summer school program did shut down; this would have been the last week of the program," she said. "Thankfully, the students are doing well, and I wish them a speedy and full recovery."

The district is still planning to offer onsite instruction beginning August 24 and will also be offering an online option for students.

"This option will be more comprehensive and robust than the digital instruction provided this spring. We will begin to distribute more information on the digital option in the coming weeks," Nieskens said.

Looking towards the school year, Nieskens said she believes onsite instruction will experience periodic disruptions.

"What we learned from the summer school shutdown was that any student or staff member who came in direct contact for more than 15 minutes with the infected students had to quarantine for 14-days, as ordered by Jefferson County Health Department. Realizing that, you can see how entire groups of staff and students could be unable to access on-site instruction for 14-day periods. We are, of course, working on plans for how to address the instructional needs of quarantined students," she said.