School problems — from university coronavirus clusters to K-12 websites — hit Triangle
It’s Wednesday and North Carolina is coming off its highest-ever increase in coronavirus deaths.
The state reported 48 new deaths Tuesday, breaking the previous record of 45. It reported another 35 on Wednesday. In total, the NC Department of Health and Human services has reported that 2,431 people in the state have died of the disease since it was first reported in N.C. in early March.
The state’s count includes 187 reported coronavirus deaths in Wake County, 81 in Durham County, 55 in Chatham County, 49 in Johnston County and 48 in Orange County.
Here’s what else is happening around the Triangle.
Updates from K-12 schools
In Wake County, school leaders plan to buy laptops for all 162,000 students to help online schooling go more smoothly, The N&O reported. The school system already has about half the devices it needs for that goal but plans to buy about 85,000 more between now and the start of next school year.
The N&O reported that some school districts had already done similar plans even before coronavirus, so they didn’t have to shut down schools for inclement weather, but “the use of remote learning during the pandemic school closures has accelerated efforts to get computers into the hands of students.”
Meanwhile, the online system that many school districts are using for remote lessons during coronavirus again crashed on Wednesday morning, the N&O reported. School has been in session for three days, and the program has crashed on two of those days.
“The system is being put under greater stress than normal because more than 70% of the state’s 1.5 million public students started the school year on Monday with online classes only due to the coronavirus pandemic,” The N&O reported.
University coronavirus clusters
UNC-Chapel Hill students are switching to online-only classes Wednesday, following more than 300 cases of coronavirus reported in the university community.
Only about a week into the fall semester, the final day of in-person school at UNC has already come due to a spike in coronavirus cases and four reported clusters. It led university leaders to reverse course on their reopening plans.
The student paper, The Daily Tar Heel, made national news Tuesday for a scathing editorial that called out campus leaders for the decision to bring students back in person at all. The newspaper, which is independent from the university, is now fundraising off an editor’s now-viral explanation for the decision: “Print news, raise hell,” one of the student journalists told the N&O.
Elsewhere around the Triangle, however, college reopenings in Raleigh and Durham are largely proceeding as planned with in-person classes and health monitoring.
At N.C. State, one employee and 41 students tested positive for COVID-19 in the first week back, according to the university’s online coronavirus dashboard. The News & Observer reported Tuesday that around a fifth of the cases at N.C. State are from students in Greek life, and that there is at least one “cluster” of cases in off-campus housing.
At Duke University, 11 students have tested positive since early August and more than 70 are currently quarantined out of precaution, the N&O reported. A few dozen others have been punished for flouting new campus public health rules.
Economic struggles in NC
North Carolina has among the lowest unemployment benefits in the nation — something that’s been brought to the forefront for people who are still jobless because of coronavirus and have now lost the extra federal unemployment benefits, which ended at the start of August.
Congress has so far declined to extend those benefits, although Republican President Donald Trump announced an executive order to pay a reduced amount that states will have to apply for, and potentially help fund.
Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper said last week he planned to apply for the program. But on Tuesday the federal government released a list of states that have started receiving benefits, and North Carolina was not on it.
North Carolinians have filed more than 2 million unemployment claims since mid-March, including more than 40,000 in the past week, according to the state Division of Employment Security.
The recession and job losses caused by coronavirus have also led to people spending less money, which in turn has led to lower tax revenues. That means that Wake County’s plan to pay for new bus lines and a commuter rail line using sales tax revenues is being delayed.
Wake County leaders had originally planned for all the pieces of their new transit plan to be fully in place within the next seven years, The N&O reported Wednesday, but now they’re saying it might not happen until 2030 or later.
This story was originally published August 19, 2020 at 1:29 PM.
