Tift County Schools seeing optimistic first week with COVID prep

TIFTON, Ga. —  Tift County students have had a busy first week back as the school system has re-opened under the state of Georgia’s system for COVID-19, with Tift schools being designated under yellow status.

“…Which means for us that we are on an ‘a-b’ schedule, we call it the blue and white plan. Which allowed for us to focus on social distance for the children and staff. Obviously we’re taking all of the normal precautions…,” says Tift Superintendent, Adam Hathaway

In addition to the rotation schedule to minimize contact and possible spread between students and staff, Tift County Schools are also handing out PPE to those in their buildings and buses who need it.

Many of the community have been very supportive of the measures that the tift county school system is taking in restarting.

Superintendent Hathaway says, “The vast majority of them who are very very thankful that we’re taking all the precautions that we can to make sure that we keep our students and our staff as safe and as healthy as possible.”

After nearly a week of smooth operations, the Tift County School System is feeling optimistic about advancing to green status in the state of Georgia…

Though they’ll need to routinely re-evaluate their next steps in line with how tift county if handling the pandemic.

“Our numbers continue to go down as far as positive cases are concerned, so our positivity rates continue to get better, our death rates continue to get better. That situation has gotten under control, so we feel really good about the data and what it’s telling us at this point,” says Hathaway.

The Tift County School System will be re-evaluating with the Department of Public Health on a two week basis.