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Boys soccer: Wyoming Seminary rolls into District 2 Class 2A championship game

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‘We can’t imagine working anywhere else’

WILKES-BARRE &mdash;The move to remote-only learning for an indefinite time has prompted Wilkes-Barre Area School District to announce wide-ranging layoffs and furloughs of part-time employees who are not needed until a return to in-person learning.
				Superintendent Brian Costello confirmed Wednesday via email that &ldquo;due to the cancellation of in-person instruction, and based on the uncertainty of our current situation, crossing guards and school greeters will be temporarily furloughed.&rdquo;
				All part-time aides, such as locker room and office workers,&rdquo; will be given 30 -day notice of their layoff based on their collective bargaining agreement.&rdquo;
				Costello promised that when in-person lessons return students to the classrooms &ldquo;These employees would be called back.&rdquo;
				At the regular monthly School Board meeting Oct. 26 Costello took time to explain the state guidance on when to use full in-person instruction, a hybrid model with some in class and others learning at home, and remote-only. The state uses several pieces of data regarding COVID-19 cases to categorize each county&rsquo;s risk as &ldquo;low,&rdquo; &ldquo;moderate&rdquo; or &ldquo;substantial.&rdquo;
				The classification depends on the incidence rate per 100,000 residents of COVID-19 in the last seven days and the percent of positive tests in the same time period. When the guidance was announced in early August, Luzerne County started in the &ldquo;moderate&rdquo; category, meaning it had between 10 and 100 new cases per 100,000 people in the last seven days or a positivity rate between 5% to 10%.
				But a sharp surge in recent weeks pushed the county into &ldquo;substantial, with more than 100 cases per 100,000 residents or positivity greater that 10%. In Luzerne County, the factor that matters is the incidence rate, which as of Friday was 132.9. The positivity rate as was at 7.7%.
				The state recommends districts in &ldquo;moderate&rdquo; counties use either a hybrid or remote-only mode, while districts in counties deemed &ldquo;substantial&rdquo; go to remote-only. But so far the final decision has been left to individual districts. In Luzerne County, most were already in or quickly switched to remote-only, but Lake-Lehman continues to allow all students who want to learn in person to do so five days a week, and the Dallas School Board voted Monday to remain in hybrid mode despite the county&rsquo;s change in designation.
				Wilkes-Barre Area, the second-largest district in the county by enrollment, had opened in hybrid mode but switched to remote-only as per state suggestion when the district had two or more cases of COVID-19 in multiple buildings. The recent surge in COVID-19 cases prompted Costello to announce at last week&rsquo;s meeting that the district will remain in remote-only mode until the incidence rate drops below 100 and stays below it for two weeks, as suggested by the state.
				That decision, in turn, resulted in the layoffs of part-time workers until a return to in-person lessons.

WB Area laying off crossing guards, greeters, part-time aides