INDIANAPOLIS — Thousands of students in central Indiana are learning from home for the rest of the week due to COVID-19-related staffing issues.
“I know my senior has been struggling with it, this all started her sophomore year. She’s lost sports, times with friends” Stephanie Willigie said.
Willigie has two children in the MSD of Wayne Township.
Her youngest, an eighth-grader, went to school on Thursday while her oldest, a senior, had remote learning due to COVID-19.
“Both of my kids are visual and kinesthetic learners so they need to be there to get the information and so it’s hard for them to try to find the motivation to learn it on their own” Willigie added.
She said the pandemic has been challenging for her two children not just on the academic side.
“I’m more worried about them mentally and emotionally because they just have no social life they have nothing," Willigie said. "They are just stuck by themselves trying to learn math and foreign languages on their own."
The complicated question remains - how do public health officials guide schools during this time of uncertainty?
“I think that a child’s education is very important, not only that but the structure the school provides,” Madison Weintraut said.
Weintraut works with the Marion County Public Health Department. She serves as a liaison to help filter the information from federal officials to schools and their nurses in Marion County.
“Is there buy-in from the students and staff and the students with those precautions,” Weintraut said.
Some factors public health officials consider when guiding a school district are cases detected at schools interconnected within a family and what precautions are already in place.
“I think it’s important for students to have that face-to-face interaction with their teachers to corral their students and make sure their attention is being held,” Weintraut said.
As Willigie continues to guide her children through the pandemic, her hope is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel
“But as a parent I want my babies to have social experiences,” Willigie concluded.
