News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
A substitute teacher shortage has forced Dekalb County High School to stop in-person learning through December 11.
Dekalb County School Director Patrick Cripps said he’s dealing with 1/4 to 1/3 of his staff being out, with quarantine numbers in the double digits at just one school. Cripps said this was his fear going into Thanksgiving break.
“Starting Friday, actually Thursday we started getting calls and we started trying to adjust and shift people around at the high school,” Cripps said. “It got to the point where we weren’t able to cover areas in that school to educate the students in-person.”
Cripps said the school is in a good position with all the students having access to a computer across all grades. He said if the high school cannot return on December 11, they will extend virtual learning until after Christmas break.
“They wouldn’t come back until after Christmas break,” Cripps said. “That last week we’ll be doing finals that week anyway, that’s what we would do at that point if we still are seeing that we can’t get our classes covered.”
Cripps said virtual finals would be familiar to students and would be similar to other tests throughout the semester. Even though Dekalb County High School is the school moving to virtual learning because of a staff shortage, Cripps said it is not unique to that one school.
“It’s across our whole system right now, we’re hanging in right now at a couple of other schools,” Cripps said. “There’s some high teacher absences, but we’ve been able to cover those.”
Dekalb County School’s Christmas Break is set for December 21 until January 4.
