Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

As COVID cases begin to decline in Troup County, Superintendent Brian Shumate said the school system is considering reopening its doors to re-allow visitors to schools. For the time being, these visits will be for specific purposes like college visits, parent-teacher conferences or guest speakers.

The suggestion comes following a nearly non-existent number of COVID cases in the school system in recent weeks.

“As far as COVID goes, we’re down to one kid and one adult in the entire district today,” Shumate said during the School Board’s Tuesday worksession.

Currently, the school system’s visitor policy is only open for specific purposes, such as college recruitment.

Shumate noted changing the policy opens the possibility to re-normalize in-school events, such as prom or award ceremonies, which have been severely limited the past two years or canceled due to COVID restrictions.

“At this time, we anticipate that we’ll have most all of our spring activities as normal as possible. We will have a little bit of one of the stipulations while we carefully [proceed.] You never know what this is going to bring.”

As of Friday, the school system has a total of eight students with a current positive COVID-19 status, according to the TCSS COVID-19 update. Twenty-one students are being quarantined for possible exposure. However, there are currently no school employees who are COVID positive or quarantined, per the report.

“We don’t want the facilities wide-open yet, it’s going to be [visits] for specific purposes,” Shumate said Thursday. “We’re not out of the woods 100 percent, and I certainly reserve the right to go back if we need to [or to] put the masks back on if we need to. But we’re as hopeful as we can be that we’re moving past this and moving forward.”