District discusses COVID-19, enrollment

Members of the Elyria City School District discussed their success with handling the novel coronavirus pandemic throughout the district during a Nov. 4 Board of Education meeting.

Board members discussed COVID-19 updates and how parents and teachers were reacting to the new measures taken by the school district.

Superintendent Ann Schloss said parents have responded well to the new automated calls with updates on COVID-19 locally as well as concerns and notifications of any cases in the district.

“As we know, the numbers continue to rise and Mrs. (Amy) Higgins (director of communications and organizational strategy for Elyria Schools) is doing a great job of keeping us informed,” Schloss said. “The robo calls come out around 3 o’clock everyday if we have anything to report.

“Our dashboard is up and you can get to it on our website.”

Amid the virus, enrollment for the school is

around the same as last year.

However, during the meeting officials discussed the decline in enrollment of preschoolers.

Due to COVID-19, preschool rooms were capped at nine students instead of the usual 18 resulting in about 175 less preschool students.

“We’re about where we were last year,” Schloss said. “It is so difficult right now because of with the ins and out of the virtual schooling and everything going on with the pandemic and online learning.

“The last count we did, we were down a little bit,

but we were pretty status quo with what we ended with last year, which we were very happy with considering everything going on.”

Board president Greg Elek said parents have let him know how they feel about Elyria Schools and its action on COVID-19.

“A number of families and parents have complimented me (about) the district for how informative (we are) and what a good job we do on the robo calls,” Elek said. “They’ve said they really feel like they’re in the loop.”

Schloss said she was informed by Lorain County

Public Health that schools are not the cause of spiking cases.

“The spreading is not going on in the schools,” she said. “We have had less than 10 confirmed cases come out of our school system.

“You can look at it on our dashboard to see the numbers.”

Schloss said the district is open to answering questions at any time and will continue to update parents on COVID-19.

“I guess the biggest thing is just for everyone to follow protocol,” she said.