BROWNVILLE, New York (WWNY) – Here’s a sign of the times: the General Brown school district was forced to go to remote-only learning today, Friday.
The reason? A lack of bus drivers and substitute teachers. Both are in short supply in north country school districts.
In an email to 7 News Thursday night, Barbara Case, school superintendent, wrote “We are not able to adequately transport children or supervise them tomorrow.
“I have been monitoring staffing all day for tomorrow, and as soon as I was notified of an additional absence, I decided to transition to remote-only this evening, so that families had ample time to plan for childcare and remote instruction for the morning.
“It should be noted that our sectional soccer game will go on as scheduled tomorrow evening,” Case wrote.
A post on the school’s web site says families that need an electronic device for remote learning should contact their school’s main office.
If you need to pick up meals, then contact the food service department.
Students will go back to in-person learning on Monday.
General Brown is the second north country school district to be forced into all-remote learning because of a bus driver shortage. It happened in late September in the Parishville-Hopkinton School District.
In general, St. Lawrence-Lewis BOCES Superintendent Tom Burns says, schools are getting by – but just barely, and only by doing a lot of juggling.
For instance, sports have been affected.
“I had a couple of staff members and parents tell me that yesterday, that the game started late because the team couldn’t leave school. They were waiting for the regular driver to get back from their normal run,” Burns told 7 News Friday.
As with so many things, COVID appears to be the reason for the shortage.
“We really would hope to see these COVID numbers come down,” Burns said. “There’s just a labor shortage across the whole area in the education sector.”
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