City of Nanticoke issued the following announcement on Oct. 23.
Greater Nanticoke Area School District announced it will switch to remote-only learning beginning Monday and running through Friday.
The district posted a notice on the homepage of its website: “All GNA schools will go virtual from Monday, October 26th to Friday, October 30.”
Contacted by email, Superintendent Ronald Grevera explained the move.
“We decided that at this point in time with both the positivity rate increasing as well as the incidence rate increasing in our local area in central Luzerne County that it was prudent for the safety of staff and students to move to a total virtual platform. We hope to be back in the hybrid model within a week or two as soon as both the positivity and incidence rates decline.”
The county has seen a sharp increase in COVID-19 cases this week, with the state reporting 417 new cases from Oct. 16 through Friday. The Nanticoke ZIP code of 18634 was not spared in that surge, with 26 new cases reported for the week, the fifth highest increase among 41 codes all or partially in Luzerne County that the Times Leader checks regularly.
The GNA notice came hours after Lake-Lehman School District Superintendent James McGovern posted a letter saying the football game between Lake-Lehman and Tunkhannock scheduled for Friday night was cancelled after a student was determined to be a probable case of COVID-19. McGovern said there was not enough time to do “the necessary contact tracing” before the game, so it was cancelled “in an abundance of caution.”
Reporting confirmed cases in multiple buildings with a 14-day period, Wilkes-Barre Area School District stopped all lessons in schools beginning Oct. 19, and announced in-person lessons will not resume until Nov. 4. Wyoming Valley West School School District reported two students testing positive with COVID-19, then closed the high school Thursday and Friday. And The Pittston Area School Board voted Tuesday to drop plans to open in hybrid mode at the end of the first marking period and to stay in remote-only mode until Jan. 4.
According to the state’s early warning “dashboard” update released every Friday with county-level information, Luzerne county may have reached “substantial” community transmission status as defined by the state using several metrics, including positivity rate and incidence rate — how many tests come back positive and how many positives there are per 100,000 people. The state has not yet changed the county’s status.
The state Department of Education and Department of Health had worked out an advisory system that suggests schools should switch to full-remote learning if their county reaches substantial status, though each district works with the state to make those decisions.
Original source can be found here.
Alerts Sign-up