PITTSBURGH -- Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) announced new COVID-19 guidance that is now mandated for Pre-K-12 schools.
The guidance is based on the number of cases in each school building over the most recent 14-day period and is to be used in conjunction with recommendations from local health departments such as the Allegheny County Health Department (ACHD).
PDE and the Pennsylvania Department of Health recommend full remote learning for all schools in counties with substantial levels of community transmission. However, schools can choose to pursue in-person instruction or other models in which school buildings are utilized by students and/or staff but they must follow this new guidance.
The North Hills School District must affirm to PDE that our operating model is Virtual as last week Allegheny County was substantial for the second consecutive week.
In the event we move to an in-person instructional model while Allegheny County is substantial, we must re-submit and affirm that we will follow both the updated face coverings mandate effective Nov. 18 and the new Pre-K-12 mandated guidance.
For the sake of transparency and to more efficiently keep track of COVID-19 cases in our schools in accordance with the new guidance, we will be updating our district COVID-19 Tracker to keep cases active for 14 days instead of 10 days. This will ensure the number of active cases displayed in the tracker is the number of cases in each building over the last 14-day period.
The new guidance varies based on the numbers of students that attend the school. Schools are broken down into three groups: small, medium and large. NHSD schools fall into the following categories:
Small
West View Elementary (approx. 450 students)
Medium
Highcliff Elementary (approx. 530 students)
Ross Elementary (approx. 570 students)
McIntyre Elementary (approx. 660 students)
Large
NHMS (approx. 1,100 students)
NHHS (approx. 1,350 students)