After a month away, students and teachers are to begin their return to Red Bank Regional High for in-person classes Tuesday, Superintendent Lou Moore said Monday night.
In an announcement posted on the school’s website, Moore wrote:
These are challenging times for sure and I know our rapid pivot to full remote today was frustrating. In addition to staffing issues today, we are also faced with the fact that transmissions have increased in our community, especially in Shrewsbury and Red Bank. Because of today’s circumstances, I asked the Monmouth County Regional Health Commission and the NJ Regional Epidemiology team to review previous recommendations that we resume in-person programs. Their previous recommendation stands: We can resume in-person programs tomorrow, December 1 with appropriate safe practices in place.
The resumption of the pandemic-era hybrid schedule follows yet one more day in “full remote mode,” though the Little Silver school had previously planned to reopen Monday.
No reason was given for Monday’s last-minute change of plans, announced shortly before 5:30 a.m.
“We are continuing to monitor transmission levels and also develop contingency plans to ensure class coverage for teachers who are absent in the hopes that we can open tomorrow,” Moore told redbankgreen in an emailed response to questions about teacher absenteeism rates.
On Monday, Monmouth County officials announced that Red Bank has had 681 COVID-19 cases since the pandemic arrived in March, up from 407 on November 1. Little Silver, had 140, up from 84; and Shrewsbury had 161, up from 97.
In addition, the freeholders reported 344 county residents hospitalized with confirmed cases of the virus, up from 84 on October 30; 48 of them in intensive care, up from 21; and 42 on ventilators, compared to 10.
Eight-hundred-eleven county resident deaths have been attributed to the pandemic, according to the New Jersey Health Department.
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