As coronavirus cases continue to rise in Whitfield County, Georgia, the school board for Dalton Public Schools has agreed to push back the start date for classes and will implement a conservative, cautious approach to reopening schools in the fall, officials said.
School will now start on Aug. 31 – a date pushed back from Aug. 6 – and parents will choose between a fully online learning curriculum or a hybrid of in-person instruction with virtual learning for all grade levels.
The plan is the most cautious in Northwest Georgia next to that of Whitfield County Schools, which has announced high schoolers will attend school twice a week and learn from home the remaining three days a week if they don’t enroll in virtual learning. Elementary and middle school students are still expected to attend school five days a week unless parents enroll them in virtual learning.
Whitfield County is dealing with one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the state of Georgia and the tri-state region.
From July 9 to 16, Whitfield County averaged 6.3 new cases a day per 10,000 residents. By comparison, Hamilton County averaged 2.8 new cases per 10,000 residents in the same time frame.