DoDEA manages to keep almost all students in school

The Department of Defense Education Activity, better known as DoDEA continues normal school operations, despite reporting COVID–19 cases within the Department of Defense and school community.

The DoD community alone has reported over 300 residents positive for the COVID virus since Monday, Jan. 31.

All of Guam's DoDEA schools remain open for five days of in-person instruction, which is known as the brick-and-motor school since students and employees have returned to school from the Christmas break on Jan. 3, according to Andersen Middle School Principal Dr. Tyais Dial.

"As part of the school community, we're gonna have cases as well," she said. "We're going to be impacted but we still believe that the best place for kids to learn is at school and we still have our mitigation measures in place to support a safe and healthy teaching environment so we're excited about that even though we had cases The students who were selected for the DoDEA Virtual School or DVS still remain in DVS and no additional students have requested to change learning environments because of cases rising, so that's a good thing. So, we're happy about that because we know the best place for kids to be is in school."

As KUAM News reported, a mere 0.68% of DoDEA students are attending classes remotely from home, which is a leap from last school year.

DoDEA as an agency does not keep or release numbers of students who test positive for the deadly virus. However, military affiliates report data to the installation level meaning Public Health receives that information.

"When students are ill or identified as close contacts they are still provided educational opportunities so they can complete assignments through our Google Classrooms," Dial said. 

She explained to KUAM News their COVID safety measures for employees and some 2,300 who are enrolled in DoDEA schools.

"Just wearing your mask, physical distancing, hand washing, sanitizing, those continue to be our most effective mitigation measures at this time. In addition, our nurses have created PSA's that are shared with our students and parents," she said. "They have been doing an amazing job in trying to keep us in school and supporting us."

According to Dr. Dial, there is a high vaccination rate of employees vaccinated against COVID. That's because they had until Nov. 22 to fulfill the federal government requirement.

A guide created by DoDEA in partnership with military commands decides when they switch to online classes completely.

"When we're in HEPCON Bravo that's the health and protection plan, our schools operate in–person should we transition to HEPCON Charlie we would go to remote learning," Dial said. "So Alpha, Alpha Plus, and Bravo, we operate in accordance with the base installations, so right now we're in Bravo."

Andersen Middle School hasn't experienced any labor shortages, but that doesn't mean they aren't ready if employee cases get out of control, as DoDEA has reported a seamless transition to online last school year.

"Of course, we do have a plan in place if we do have staff shortages," Dial said. "The good thing about our schools is we do have really small class sizes and so we work together as a team and just help each other as a team. We also have a lot of substitutes available and ready to serve as well in all areas."