MACON, Ga. — Bibb County Schools has a mask mandate, social distancing, and other COVID-19 measures in place before the school year even started.
Now, Superintendent Curtis Jones says they're trying out a new system that could send groups of students home at a time instead of switching everyone to remote learning at once.
"We had a conversation with the North Central Health District and their thinking was consistent with ours. If you have three students in a class that tested positive, you need to look into that situation so that's the number that we're using," he says.
As the fall semester persists, so do the number of positive COVID cases in Bibb County Schools.
Superintendent Curtis Jones says between positive cases and contact tracing, they're now moving 126 Howard Middle School seventh-graders, and 21 second-graders from Burdell-Hunt Elementary to asynchronous learning.
"'Asynchronous' means that teachers will be available in the classroom, but they will not be teaching live in the classroom," says Jones.
In other words, teachers will still be in classrooms recording and uploading lessons for students on canvas, and students can work on them at their own pace from home.
"Students will be given assignments through canvas, which is another program that we were able to use last year," he says.
Jones says this decision was also based on feedback from parents dating back to last school year, when the pandemic first hit.
"It was hard for parents who were working and were trying to work with different students, their children, and have them all online at the same time so this is our way of responding to those concerns that we heard last year."
He says it's a criticism they've heard since the start of the school year.
"It's interesting to me that people will say 'we need to close the schools' but they're not saying they want these businesses to close, which is where these parents are going, and so we're trying to find a way to keep students in school as much as possible for in-person learning while keeping them safe," says Jones.
He says continuing to send groups of students home based on COVID trends could help them slow the spread and prevent a bigger outbreak.
"This is showing that we continue to remember the lessons from last year when we had to go remote."
Jones says as long as students aren't showing any COVID-19 symptoms, they can return back to the classroom starting on September 8.
Until that time, they cannot be at the school or attend any school events.