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Wood County Schools to stay on blended format

PARKERSBURG — Wood County Schools will continue to use the blended learning format in the foreseeable future according to Superintendent Will Hosaflook, despite the county entering the “yellow” zone phase after reports released by the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources on Tuesday.

Students will still alternate between going to class in person and working assignments from home since the school year began on Sept. 8, but Hosaflook asks all students, faculty, parents and the community to all do their part in helping the county get back to school full time.

“We are asking everyone, students, teachers, parents and community members to do their part,” Hosaflook said. “Follow the CDC Guidelines. Wear a mask. Social distance. Wash your hands. Everyone needs to help us get back into the green and get students back in the schools full time.”

Based on the seven-day rolling average based on population, Wood County was at a rate of 3.25 cases per 100,00 people on Tuesday, a 0.68 increase from Monday’s numbers and much lower compared to green’s 3 or less cases per 100,000.

This announcement is coming off the heels of Gov. Jim Justice announcing a new color code “gold” to the County Alert System map on Tuesday.

For the schools located in Wood County much will not be changed, as green and yellow counties will have the same rules for allowing in-person school, sports and extracurricular activities.

Despite being a yellow zone, Parkersburg High School Athletic Director Chris Way believes that Wood County schools will be able to play games with fans in the stands, despite the change.

“I think that the new guidelines since they added the gold level, yellow and the green are very similar into what you can do and who’s allowed in the games,” Way said. “Our numbers are still pretty low in the yellow and we just barely got out of green. We will have to look and see the numbers over the next week or so and see if they keep trending up to see if we would possibly be headed closer to an orange or gold. If that happens, then we’d have some big differences and who could attend, who would be able to play but as of right now we’re still good to be able to play all the other green and yellow teams.”

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