CLAY COUNTY, Fla. — Students in Clay County will head back to school on Tuesday and teachers have been busy preparing for their arrival.
Lindsay Burghart has been a teacher in Clay County for 14 years.
On Tuesday she’ll welcome back her 11th and 12th-grade students to her intensive reading class at Middleburg High School.
When you walk into her classroom the first thing you’ll notice is hand sanitizer and desk that are spaced apart.
“If they feel safe. They’re going to learn better so I think that’s every teacher’s first goal is to make them feel safe,” Burghart said.
This year she’s learning new technologies like Pear Deck and Google Classrooms.
We learned that every student has assigned seating so that way if there is a COVID-19 case the district can use contact tracing to see who else that student may have come in contact with.
Unlike Duval and St. Johns counties, Clay does not require desk shields in the classrooms.
The Clay County school district says that students in 3rd grade and up will also be required to wear a mask.
New this year, tickets to sporting events will be digital-only and when fans come out to watch a game seating will be at 30% capacity.
With all the new safety protocols in place, Burghart told me she feels confident teaching again.
“They’ve done a really good job of informing us and we’re not looking at what’s on Facebook, we’re looking at what the experts say and that’s what Clay County is providing us with,” Burghart said.
Burghart says she’s excited to see her students.
The pandemic shut everything down in March and she barely had any time to say goodbye.
“Getting them back. It’s like coming home, it’s when you’ve taken that long vacation or you’re gone for a long time and you just want to be back with everybody again,” she said.