ST. LOUIS — School districts continue to make daily decisions on how to handle the surge in COVID cases.
Granite City School leaders announced they are switching to remote learning starting Friday.
Kristen Cheng has three children in the Granite City School District No. 9.
"It's been two years with COVID it seems like now, and it's kind of to the point where everybody's just tired of it being there," Cheng said.
Her youngest son and oldest daughter had a tough time when they switched to remote learning last year.
"She did really bad last year, her grades were dropping, but as soon as she got in school, she's finally got up to where she's caught up with learning. Now it's kind of like, is it going to go back down or is it going to keep going forward?" Cheng said.
That's a concern she has to face now that Superintendent Stephanie Cann made the tough decision to have the district go back to virtual learning.
"We know that remote learning is not what is best for students but we also know that at some point we have to do what's best for their safety and the staff's as well," Cann said.
The district started back in person on Monday but had to quickly pivot when operational staff members got sick.
"Today, in addition to student and teacher call-offs, we had bus driver call-offs, which sort of really forced our hand this direction," Cann said.
Students will not have school on Thursday, giving parents and staff members time to adjust to the switch to virtual which begins on Friday.
"We're trying to take enough time off to allow for the quarantines and the symptomatic people or the ill people to get healthy again so we pushed back the return until the 24th," Cann said.
"I think it's just best that they do it like this for a temporary amount of time and hopefully get everybody back to normal," Cheng said.
Granite City School District No. 9 has about 5800 students and 750 staff members.
Cann said the Granite City area has the highest surge in Madison County with over 1,000 current COVID cases.