Bay Village Students Returning To The Classroom After Starting Year Online

Students in the Bay Village City School District are returning to the classroom Monday after starting the year with remote learning.  

The district wanted to follow the Cuyahoga County Board of Health’s recommendation to begin the academic year with online classes, said Bay Village Superintendent Jodie Hausmann, but several factors swayed administrators to bring students back to school buildings.

Cuyahoga County remaining at level two, or orange, on the state’s public health advisory map for the past three weeks, the trend of a declining number of cases in the county and a positivity rate below 5 percent all contributed to the decision, she said. 

“So looking at that data trend, we felt that we had this window of opportunity to reopen,” said Hausmann. “And we also looked at our local data. Bay Village has a very low number of cases in Cuyahoga County as well as within our own learning community. Our teachers have been in the building for three weeks now. We have not had any cases among our staff during those three weeks.”

Hausmann said Bay Village will have a “slow start” week with 50 percent of the district’s students on campus at any given time from Monday through Thursday. By Friday, all students who choose in-person learning will be back in the classroom. Students can opt to continue learning virtually.

A COVID-19 coordinator will work with the district nurse and administration team and will also serve as the liaison to the Cuyahoga County Board of Health.

“Because we’ll have one person coordinating, monitoring, you know, kind of tracking things, where our goal is that we’re not going to miss any important data,” said Hausman. “If we see certain things happening locally within one building or a classroom, that we want to respond quickly to that.”

Hausmann said the district will publish an online dashboard showing confirmed COVID cases among students and staff in order to be completely transparent.