Central Westmoreland vo-tech goes remote for remainder of week
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The Central Westmoreland Career and Technology Center is moving to remote learning this week to mitigate the spread of coronavirus.
The New Stanton facility is closed through Friday. Students are required to log into their program via Google Classroom each day during their assigned session for instruction and assignments. An update on whether students will continue with remote learning or a hybrid model of learning will be given Friday.
The decision came after most of the center’s member school districts moved to remote learning through the holidays. Member schools for the center include Belle Vernon Area, Mount Pleasant Area, Norwin, Greensburg Salem, Penn-Trafford, Hempfield Area, Southmoreland, Jeannette, Yough and Frazier in Fayette County.
Executive Director Jason Lucia said the closure will give school officials the opportunity to deep clean the campus, and reassess covid-19 data at the end of the week.
According to Lucia, the center has a total of 14 cases since the school year began in the fall.
“They’ve been so spread out where, most of the time, the positive cases would get recognized at the sending district first and they would handle it, therefore, we saw very few of the positive cases that we had to do in depth contact tracing with,” Lucia said. “We’ve only had a couple of those and they’ve been spread out since the beginning of the school year.”
Students at the center have been attending classes five days a week. However, as districts followed a hybrid model of learning, or a mix of in-person and online classes, students would attend the center on the day of their in-person classes.
Over the past month, cases across Westmoreland County have remained in the “substantial” level of transmission, a benchmark determined by state health officials that is reached when 100 or more cases per 100,000 residents are recorded in a given week. For the week ending Dec. 3, the county had 436.1 cases per 100,000 residents and an 18.9% positivity rate.
In the county, the Eastern Westmoreland Career and Technology Center was the first technical center to move to remote learning last week. Remote learning will remain in place through Jan. 15, when school officials will reevaluate the instructional model.
For technical centers, which offer largely hands-on programs, Lucia said, “Has it been challenging to do hands on activity and demonstration remotely? I would say 100%, yes, it’s been challenging, but I think, at minimum, my staff has done things very well where they are doing live demonstrations via video to the students and integrating that within their Google Classroom activities.”