The Gilbert and Mesa school districts in the East Valley have both had two metrics in the red for the past two weeks, according to the Maricopa County’s School COVID-19 dashboard.
The Gilbert district has decided to transition to hybrid learning starting Monday in response and stay in that mode through the rest of the semester, the district said in a Dec. 3 statement. This means students will only meet twice a week.
The Mesa district will continue in-person classes through the end of this semester, but Superintendent Andi Fourlis said the district would continue to close classrooms and entire districts on a case-by-case. It will start next semester virtually in part because the district won’t have critical COVID-19 data during the winter break, she said.
"We are going to need to collect school-level data in those first two weeks back to determine our next steps," she said.
Last weekend, the Mesa Education Association has sent a letter to the district asking it to return to virtual learning sooner.
“We’re a little disappointed that we are going to take the next two weeks, and possibly have more students and staff members get COVID," said MEA President Joshua Buckley. "We think that it would have been a better decision to kind of give us a longer gap to make sure students are staying safe.”
However, Buckley said the association is encouraged that the district has said it will use metrics to guide when it should resume in-person classes.
