Dare families surveyed ahead of BOE meeting

School re-opening likely to be main topic

Ahead of what appears to be upcoming debate by the Dare County Board of Education on whether to re-open classrooms, Dare Schools Superintendent John Farrelly on Feb. 2 emailed a survey to school families “to get feedback on the potential reopening of school options to share with the Dare County Board of Education.”

According to Farrelly, the Board of Education will call a special meeting on the issue after a Feb. 13 vaccine clinic at which Dare County Schools staff (DCS) will have the opportunity to get a second dose of COVID vaccine. The first shots were available to schools’ staff at a Jan. 23 vaccine clinic held at First Flight High School. According to the DCS, 616 staffers registered to receive their shots at that first clinic.

The inoculation of school staff certainly seems connected to any decision over whether to re-open schools. Back on Nov. 13, when the Dare County Board of Education voted 6-1 to return students to remote learning, a critical shortage of teachers was cited as a key reason.

At that time, 85 of the county’s teachers were not available for duty because they had either been exposed to COVID-19 or had been placed in quarantine. Schools had been briefly re-opened on Oct. 26 before a series of infections led to the mid-November vote to close them again.