Marshall County Schools Returning to 4-Day Schedule Feb. 15 for Pre-K Through 8th Grade

MOUNDSVILLE -- Marshall County's youngest students are slated to return to four-day in-person learning after Valentine's Day.

Based on input from the Marshall County Health Department and feedback from parents, teachers and administrators, Marshall County Schools announced Wednesday that students would remain on the hybrid schedule through next week. Yet starting Feb. 15, students are scheduled to attend in-person classes Monday-Tuesday and Thursday-Friday, with remote learning Wednesday to deep clean the schools.

The move to a four-day schedule reflects a downward trend in COVID-19 cases in Marshall County, which remained red on the Department of Health and Human Resources COVID-19 alert map.

That downward trend, combined with the fact that more than 400 school personnel will have received their second dose of vaccine by the end of next week was taken into consideration.

Ninety-four employees who want to be vaccinated have not yet received it, and those remaining personnel will be moved to the top priority for vaccination by county services.

High school students will remain on remote learning until the DHHR map shows a stage other than red in Marshall County, but superintendent Shelby Haines said they hope to bring them back soon.

"Every Sunday, we hope for orange, and we continue to watch those trends," she said. "I talk to the health department multiple times every day, and we are working very hard to contact trace. The quicker we can get people isolated and quarantined without spreading it to other people, the better off we are."

"We always want kids in school, no matter what," Haines added. "Our faculty has been amazing to work on remote learning and do what they can to keep in touch with children. Some of the forgotten people in all of this are our service personnel, who have also done amazing things. We have instructional aides who are doing online classes with people, we have bus drivers doing online modules to continue to put their hours in for work, and have a lot of good things going on here."