Positive first week for Wayne County Schools

MONTICELLO, Ky. — The first week of virtual at Wayne County Schools has accounted for 3,046 students taking part in the digital learning process. The school system continues to observe NTI (non traditional instruction) days and all students at least through September 25 will continue to be considered virtual students.

Teachers are recording participation in their Infinite Campus software programs, with students working individually at different paces from home, as the school system is not recording daily attendance. The teachers are pleased to be receiving a positive response from students in educating them with virtual learning tools.

According to Public Relations Officer, Linda Jones, most students were already familiar with digital learning for a portion of the previous school year. Daily participation for students learning through non-traditional instruction may be in real time during the school day or at times outside of normal school hours with at least one of four options.

Jones went on to say the options include one on one video communication or phone calls between teacher and student (or teacher and parent with smaller children or students with special needs) - group video communication or phone calls between the teacher and a whole class or between a teacher and smaller groups of students within a class - student time logged into a learning management software system completing assignments or submission of paper-based assignments for students in a non-digital, non-traditional setting.

The school district has received several inquiries about internet options for students at home and they continue to reach out to assist families with any technical issues or explanations of assignments. Parents may call for a wired connection with CTS or Windstream as they both offer a plan for student access for $15 a month. Other options for wireless carriers are Bluegrass and AT&T at around 20 dollars a month, but they do not service all parts of the county.

Jones further stated the district also has good free hotspot access to their network at the high school gym parking lot for students with a personal device connection and the school issued Chromebook automatically accesses the network. In the community. CTS has hotspots located at the ASPIRE Center and the Farmers Market. Several more hotspots are being planned and Wayne County Schools will share those locations as soon as they are brought online.

(For all the Wayne County news, visit the Commonwealth Journal and WKYM-FM Facebook pages and www.somerset-kentucky.com.)