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By Carmen Ensinger
Carrollton School District transitioned to remote learning last week, but the situation is supposed to be very short-lived.
The district all-call went out to parents that beginning on Thursday, the district was moving to remote learning after only two days of classes after returning from the holiday break.
Ironically, it was not because of a high number of COVID cases or a shortage of teachers, as some were speculating. The need to go remote was because the district had three-fifths of its janitorial staff out and all of its cooks out.
Due to an issue of violating HIPPA regulations, District Superintendent Mark Halwachs could not state the reason the employees were out.
“We have five total custodians and three of them were out and we have four cooks and all four of them were out,” he said. “We can’t clean and we can’t prepare meals so the decision was made to go remote until we get those employees back, which should be no later than next Thursday (Jan. 13).”
Even with remote learning, the district is obligated to provide both breakfast and lunches to its students.
“We are having someone come in to prepare the meals so we can begin delivering them on Monday,” Halwachs said. “We are keeping an eye on things and if we don’t have any more out and we get our custodians back, we should be able to return on Wednesday or Thursday of this week.”
Halwachs said the district is bringing in a professional cleaning company to clean and disinfect both buildings.
“If we can’t disinfect the buildings, we can’t be in there,” he said. “This company is going to thoroughly disinfect both buildings over the course of two days. The custodians haven’t been able to clean good being short-staffed the two-days we were back so I want it thoroughly cleaned before we bring people back into those buildings.”
