The Montgomery County Department of Education voted in the meeting that the order will be put into place, but this will not be affecting the Boyertown Area School District at all. The vote on this was unanimous and currently all schools i Montgomery County, public or private, will be shutdown for the next two weeks and extracurricular activities will be cancelled during this time. The acting superintendent for Boyertown has decided that we will continue with the current plan and that this will have no effect on us unless she receives other instructions from PA’s Department of Education. There will be a letter sent to families on November 13 about this issue.

After Montgomery County Officials met yesterday, they have decided to take the issue to a vote in a meeting today at 12:00pm, after both parents and school districts disagreed with the idea. The parents and schools agree that the individual districts should decided whether they close down again for 2 weeks or whether they continue to keep the kids in school. They are worried about the toll another closure will take on all the kids mentally and physically and that once its shut down again, that it will be for longer than just two weeks. The meeting yesterday started at 10:00am and did not end until 12:30pm with a 2 hour public comment window of upset parents and school superintendents speaking out against the plan. These comments are what pushed the vote off until today, since they are all very concerned that this will last longer than what they are saying. The parents and district officials were fighting the board of Montgomery County when they went on recess yesterday saying that if the order shall pass, they need to start preparing for this shutdown, but the board is not voting on it until today.

All around the state of Pennsylvania, the teachers unions are fighting to change schooling back to all virtual with the cases in the state continuing to rise since the start of October. Or that the schools should temporarily go full virtual, since the number of cases in the state keep rising and rising. According to WFMZ 69 News, the state currently is setting the record of having  75% more confirmed cases in the span of two weeks, which obviously is not a good rate. The hospitalizations have also tripled since the start of October.

Currently, Montgomery County officials plan to meet today at 10:00am to discuss this issue. They will determine whether or not the schools in the particular county will end up going full virtual for two weeks starting November 23rd or if the in-person instruction will continue for this amount of time. The reason this may happen is because Thanksgiving break is quickly approaching and most students travel during this break, whether its to see family or just go on vacation. If we go virtual, it would prevent the possibility of spreading Covid and it would protect everyone from getting sick. Most people that end up going out of state have to quarantine for two weeks anyways, so no harm in going all virtual for the start of that week and after break.

This meeting may affect Boyertown Area School District because two of our buildings are actually in Montgomery County. Not all of our schools are in Berks County, but majority are. The buildings in Montgomery are New Hanover Upper Frederick Elementary and Middle School East.