Just when students (or at least a third of them) were getting geared up to re-enter North Harford, shortly after the COVID-19 spike following the US elections. Now students must prepare for another few months at home.

     Originally students were set to start Harford’s first step in the plan to reopen school, each student that opted to return was put into one of four groups to go either Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.  This was to separate students to lower the possibility of an outbreak within the school.

     Following the COVID wave and Joe Biden being elected, this plan was changed to be online classes and laptops until the “county statistics fall below 15 cases 100,000 positive cases per day” as stated by Superintendent Sean Bulson. 

Some students are indifferent as they didn’t want to go back in the first place, while others are upset as they were ready to go back and see their friends.

     Sophomore Harley Greb, who chose to stay home before the plan changed, stated that while “I enjoy being able to sleep in… But it is kind of hard to keep up with all the work”. She also shared a common problem with many students, her grades are slipping. “Before online they were way better,” claimed Greb.

    Final-year student (or Senior as more commonly known) Miles LaSeta was attending school daily and was one of the students to return early to class and was upset with how the schools handled it in the first place. “Schools should have never opened until it was safe for everyone to come back to school,”  LaSeta expressed. Now with the new spike it seems like the county is following that idea.

     Other students aren’t so much having trouble with online school, in fact Sophomore Riley Porterfield stated that her “grades had never been better”.  but grades aren’t everything. She also went on to talk about the stress online school has been with not being able to see people and always being inside, saying online classes were “stupid” and she was “bored”.

     Now that the first quarter is finished, and New Year’s seems so close online school is on its full roll and things have started to smooth things out. Porterfield also added that earlier in the process she had many issues with time management and even just working her way around a virtual school like how to get into classes and where to find assignments, but as said “as I[Riley] learn more so do the teachers”, and that she has had very few problems as of recently

     No one is sure when school will return in person, some will be happy, and some won’t but it’s about time we got back to “normal” life. The world is in this together.