After nearly three years of dealing with Covid in our daily lives, the light at the end of the tunnel still appears to be unseen. With the new highly contagious Omicron variant making its way from country to country, city to city, and now schools, there is speculation that students may return to virtual learning for a time. 

Some school districts in Washington are already doing online classes for a week or two due to staffing shortages. 

According to King5.com,  Lake Washington High School students and staff have temporarily switched to online learning.

“The decision was not dictated by the health department, according to Dr. John Holmen, Superintendent.

It was made by the district due to our inability to safely operate the school as a result of so many staff being absent and the number of unfilled sub positions,” a message from Holmen reads.

Numbers were declining for a while back in November and December until the new variant made its way to Washington. Counties in Western Washington are reporting record-breaking daily cases. 

King5.com also states, “With a seven-day average of 2,477 cases as of Jan. 1. Hospitalization in the county has also been on a steep rise with a seven-day average of more than 26 daily COVID-19 admissions as of Dec. 31.”

These numbers also directly affect the staffing shortage within the schools. As more and more educators must quarantine themselves for the one to two-week duration and a lack of substitute teachers, creates the perfect storm. 

On Monday, January 10th, yet another school district canceled classes. Franklin High School announced a short-term class cancellation due to more staff and student absences.

Wenatchee High School is taking the amount of student and teacher absences into consideration. Kelly Lopez, the district’s director of Human Resources, addressed this issue to the Wenatchee World. 

“Our goal, with all of this, is to keep our kiddos in class.”

With this, Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Chris Reykdal wants to ensure the community that this year will not be a duplicate of 2020. But it will be a challenging and rough year ahead to keep schools open while maintaining a healthy and safe setting.