GREAT FALLS — Students returned to Great Falls High School on Wednesday after more positive coronavirus cases pushed them to learn remotely at the beginning of the week.
Wednesday marks the beginning of a new phase of the semester for students, teachers and families at GFHS and in the school district. On Monday, Superintendent Tom Moore predicted that as more coronavirus cases arise in the district, schools may have to transition to remote learning intermittently, on a case-by-case basis, to allow enough time to clean school buildings and contact trace. It's one more way in which this semester is shaping up to be a lot more complicated than even last semester, according to some students and teachers.
GFHS English teacher Mary Dea got the phone call on Sunday night about remote learning. An associate principal told her to initiate emergency phone trees for the teachers.
"My feeling at first was, it's OK, it's only two days," she said. Dea and other teachers reached out to their students and assigned homework remotely until students could come back to the classroom on Wednesday.
Still, not every student came back to school. Approximately 15% of the district's about 10,000 students had already opted for remote learning earlier this year, and many students were still quarantining after previous outbreaks at the school.
"When one kid gets sick, it doesn't just affect them, it's all the kids who are around them," said Alysa Curry, GFHS student body president. "So I think more students are nervous they're going to miss school because they're around someone who has COVID-19."
One of those students was Mackenzie Thurston, a GFHS senior who's been quarantined for almost two weeks after contact tracers with the Cascade City-County Health Department informed her she had been in close contact with a COVID-positive person. Remote learning has already been a challenge for her. Thurston said she had trouble getting in touch with her teachers during the districtwide network outage that Moore revealed at Monday's press conference was caused by a ransomware attack.
"It's been crazy," she said.
She's also a volleyball player who missed the first week of opening games from quarantining. Thurston's team stopped by her house for a socially distanced show of support last week, honking and waving. Mackenzie said it was a bright spot amid a lot of uncertainty.
"This whole experience has made me realize how grateful I have to be for everything that I have," she said.
