HOUSTON COUNTY, Ga. — Houston County Schools are at the one month mark since school began during a pandemic, and Superintendent Mark Scott says student morale is high.
"At the beginning of the school year, I mean, it was overwhelming just the feeling in the schools and to see how happy students were. I had parents tell me students were as happy as they've ever been," Scott said.
He says they faced some challenges as expected -- like fixing class schedules and long lines at pick up and drop off. Their adjustments to social distancing guidelines and face masks has gone pretty well.
"I thought our students did a great job coming in and following directions they were given by their schools and their teachers and being very compliant with wearing their face coverings and the hand hygiene and really adjusting to the new routines that were put into place," Scott said.
With 70% of nearly 30,000 students returning in person, Scott feels they've worked hard to limit exposure with their latest report of 20 positive cases across the entire district.
"The thing that is really a positive for us is that we've not had single cases of COVID-19 turn into multiple cases where we've had a congregate outbreak where we've had additional students to become ill based on their exposure to a particular student," Scott said.
He's working closely with the state department of health and an epidemiologist to monitor each reported case.
Now, almost a month into the school year, he says he still believes the early start was best for the district.
"We feel like so many of our children depend on that face-to-face interaction to get what they need, and those were parent decisions and parents were able to make those decisions as to whether they wanted face-to-face or whether they wanted the digital learning and it's worked out well," Scott said.
Scott says they are aware some parents have concerns about individual situations and they'll continue respond to their needs.
One major challenge they're still working through is getting meals to remote learning students.
They're coming up with ways to provide more sites for easier pick up.
The district has about 9,000 students doing remote learning. They bought about 3,000 additional computers from the CARES ACT relief fund to help students who needed a device at home.