McKeesport Area School District: Superintendent cites hope in COVID-19 battle

By JEFF STITT

jstitt@yourmvi.com

McKeesport Area Superintendent Dr. Mark Holtzman provided an update on COVID-19 cases and mitigation efforts during Wednesday’s school board meeting.

“We’re looking forward to moving into a new year with some hope and encouragement that we can continue to educate our children at a high level, have our schools open, continue to allow children to participate in activities and continue to safely manage our schools the best that we possibly can,” he said.

MASD students who are attending school in person returned to the classroom Wednesday for the first time since Thanksgiving break. They were slated to return to school buildings Tuesday, but MASD decided to hold a virtual learning day because of winter weather. 

All MASD students spent the three days prior to the start of Thanksgiving break learning remotely after the Allegheny County Health Department and state Department of Health made recommendations to consider temporarily moving to virtual learning amid a regional spike in confirmed COVID-19 cases.

“I just want to share a few updates when it comes to COVID-19 in our schools,” Holtzman said. “Obviously we implemented a tracker. … Those cases are now up to date.”

Since the creation of the tracker, which can be viewed at mckasd.net under the “COVID-19” tab, the district had been following a strict protocol of only adding cases to the tracker when they had been officially confirmed by ACHD.

“One of the issues we ran into was receiving feedback confirmation from the Allegheny County Health Department about probable cases,” Holtzman said. “So it makes it very challenging for us to document those particular cases without having a paper trail.”