Late into the first week of November, Superintendent Dr. Julie Everly and the MPS School Board made the decision to shut down the in-person option for education at Monroe Public Schools, learning labs. The decision was made in cooperation with the local health department after record numbers of COVID-19 cases in Michigan as well as Monroe County were recorded beginning in late autumn, after Halloween. The order went into effect on Monday, Nov. 5 (Monroe News).

Superintendent Everly described that at the beginning of the year, each school district in Michigan was required to submit a “Return-to-Learn Plan,” in order to describe their methods of responsibly educating the local youth as schools began to open at the end of summer. In its plan, Monroe committed to keeping track of its case numbers and what “phase” of re-opening it was in in order to make sure that the spread of the Coronavirus was not exacerbated by school opening back up.

“I meet with our local health department every week, and at the beginning of the school year, they indicated to me that if we see more than 10 cases every day locally, we would need to talk and evaluate where we are, and look at putting a stricter mitigation plan in case,” Everly said.

In Michigan, there are currently over four thousand active COVID-19 cases, with 78 of those in Monroe County alone. (Monroe News)

Senior A’davian Billingsley, who attended learning labs, stressed the importance of teachers in this time.

“Since I’ve been out of learning labs, I’ve maintained my same grades because I get help from amazing teachers who put in extra hours to help out the students. I guess we don’t really think about how this is affecting the teachers, too,” Billingsley said.