“The next three weeks will be crucial,” said Stephanie Browning, Boone County Public Health Director Friday, November 13.

The current Boone County Public Health Order will be extended until December 7, as COVID-19 cases increase not only in the Columbia but in Mid-Missouri region including its schools.

“Not only with the city but the rural parts of the county, cases are increasing in schools and all age groups. People are letting their guard down,” said Browning.

SoBoCo is no exception in the struggle to keep students in seat instruction amidst the COVID-19 pandemic with the numbers of positive cases and quarantined staff and students continue to increase.

“Unfortunately, the numbers in the high school continue to tick up,” said Chris Felmlee SoBoCo Superintendent. “There’s no single smoking gun. It just is COVID.”

On Wednesday November, 11 there were 321 in quarantine for SoBoCo school district.

Felmlee gave specific guidelines on how the SoBoCO administration could decide to move from in-seat to virtual learning.

“Seventy percent student attendance plus and the inability to staff classrooms appropriately with substitutes,” is what will trigger virtual learning said Felmlee. “The current trend is looking like that is what we are going to have to do.”

~ Read more in today’s Journal ~

By Carson Blake