At Logansport High School, there have been multiple rumors and or suspicions in regards to the COVID-19 protocols that the high school follows.

“The common protocol (in regards to COVID-19) comes from the Indiana State Health Department and that is in the plan where we are asking people to practice using personal protective equipment, sanitizing, washing their hands frequently, maintaining social distancing,” Workplace Coordinator Mr. Canady said.

Not only does the school use the common protocols, they devised a plan this summer to best fit the needs of students in the different regions of school life.

“What we did is have several different groups of people work on each part of the plan. The nurses worked on the whole health part of it, and athletics dealt with the extracurriculars. We had people work on the general practices that we do as far as sanitation in the buildings, and we have pieces on curriculum and instructions. We took all these ideas together and worked as a group to develop the plan,” Canady said.

However, as COVID-19 has stayed utterly unpredictable, the plan has had to change multiple times.

“Since that time, more information that the Indiana State Health Department has come out with dealing with COVID-19. So as they learned more, we learned more, and we have devised the plan a few times since we have started,” Canady said.

These new devised plans and strategies have been the “Hybrid Schedule” and the week off of school to better mitigate the spread of COVID-19. The school corporation is hoping to keep the students in school as much as possible, instead of going online like the spring of last year.

“The corporation decided to push for in-person learning after watching the impact that remote learning had on students at the end of the year last year, including the complete school life. As we look at the opportunities lost and look at what the statistics are telling us, that kids who are 18 years and younger are the least impacted people in regards to COVID-19. The Health Department is saying that school is the safest place students can be. These are the determining factors on why we decided to open the school in person,” Canady said.

Based on the statistics and how the spring went last year, the school deems it safer for the student body to be in the person, but there are other reasons as well.

“Across the nation, that is what this whole experience has taught us. When you go to remote learning you cannot facilitate what you need as a student to be successful, once you get out of here. In person learning is the best way to do it. There are also classes that if you do it remotely you cannot do certain labs and activities that would be needed to get credit. There is no substitute for good in person instruction,” Canady said.

By keeping the students in school, there were going to be problems. With so many kids in one area, there is no proper way to regulate and manage every single person.

“I don’t believe that we’ve had anybody who has contracted COVID-19 at school. People have contracted COVID-19 as they are going to different activities outside of school. They are not sitting in class contracting COVID-19. The last I knew, this was an accurate statistic,” Canady said.

All this being said, no one knew what COVID-19 was going to bring, no one knew what the outcome would be of this pandemic. Only time will tell if these protocols were successful or not.