CLEVELAND, Ohio – School districts would be the first to decide if a building or multiple schools would be closed due to the coronavirus, says Good Mike DeWine.
But there is a possibility that state schools would close by region or statewide if there was enough of a threat, he said in a coronavirus briefing on Friday.
“We will not get there until we see what the facts are,” DeWine said.
Whether schools should reopen to person classes is a topic of intense national debate. Those talks came to the fore last week in Cuyahoga County, when the health board issued a recommendation to start school with distance classes and refrain from attending elementary schools.
A number of schools turned up to meet the recommendation, and there were several rallies in the province to reopen schools and re-create sports.
Ohio’s approach to reopening schools has been to issue a flexible set of recommendations, but leave the majority of decisions to local school districts. Last week, the state introduced a mask mandate for students. DeWine said on Friday it trusts districts to make decisions to keep students and staff safe in the event of an outbreak.
The state is at about a 5.5% positivity rate, which is higher than officials want for back-to-school, DeWine said. He urged communities to maintain mask use and social distance to help re-open schools and take the proper precautionary measures.
DeWine also encourages teachers, coaches and other school leaders to have conversations with students about their behavior outside of school and to tell them to keep a social distance and wear masks, even when just hanging out with friends.
“November, December-January, can be difficult,” DeWine said, in talks with national experts. ‘The first obstacle is going back to school.’
