The Clark County School Board has postponed a vote on an attempt to return students to in-person schooling this Thursday. The Board was planning on voting on a “hybrid model” in which most students would attend school for parts of the week. However, surging coronavirus cases in Nevada deterred the board from making their final decision during the school board meeting.

Supporters of the hybrid model emphasized the need for a return to in-person schools, given the elevated levels of suicide and decreased attendance that has occurred since online schooling. In an article for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Superintendent Jesus Jara denounced the “devastating” toll that the virus had on children forced to attend online schools.

“Currently, we are in the midst of a mental health crisis and an academic crisis,” Deputy Superintendent Brenda Larsen-Mirchell said. “We must…proactively develop a plan to get our students back with their peers and their adult educators.”

There are fears over the potential situation of students returning to school without the necessary steps to mitigate spread of the coronavirus.

“That was going to be one of my recommendations, that we table this. That we give this some time. That we look at the numbers,” CCSD District C Trustee Linda Young said. “You know, we call ourselves ‘DDD’, the three D’s, data-driven decisions. And there’s some data, that we were not considering, in my opinion, before we make a decision. So, I appreciate the fact that we took the time, a little bit of time, to pause.”

The next meeting is November 19, but there is nothing on the agenda for this to be heard again.