North Idaho College classes are to be reinstated in-person after moving to a primarily online schedule for two weeks as case numbers spiked among students and staff.
Classes will resume to their normal schedule on Feb. 7 after the NIC Rebounds Committee’s assessment of COVID-19’s impact on the school. When the restrictions were announced, 104 students and faculty members were in quarantine but within the first weekend, 61 people were released from isolation.
The decision was a direct response to the case numbers. Alex Harris, interim dean of students and director of COVID response, said, “The board specifically says in their policy that we’re not allowed to implement a mask mandate. As a group, a lot of people, leadership here, talked about what we could do to help get students through this tough time,” which led to the movement to a partially online schedule.
Following the Jan. 19 board meeting, instructors were asked to resort to their contingency plans that were established in case of a COVID outbreak. Due to the nature of the Omicron variant, however, only a two week restriction was necessary.
Harris said, “Nationally, you can look at areas where Omicron has spiked and just as fast as it comes on it goes down.”
Those who had labs in person continued on campus as many of these classes met social distancing requirements prior to the lockdowns. Sports also functioned in-person, although audience capacity was reduced to 50%.
One student, Gabe Maddox, said “I think our partial two-week shutdown was a little riling, kind of hard to stay up to date with classes,” but said that overall, the change had little effect on his ability to learn due to the few classes he was taking and the small number of students in those classes allowing him to remain primarily in-person.
Another student had the majority of his classes moved to off-campus learning and expressed his dislike of online classes. “I have to be more in person to really learn,” said Jace Kelly, freshman, “I can’t focus on something if I’m sitting in my room because I have so many things around me distracting me so when I’m in a classroom I can actually fully focus on something.”
Following the original lockdown in March 2020 North Idaho College has implemented many new measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 including changing the airflow in buildings, adding improved filters, and including social distancing in many classes based on the guidance by the NIC Rebounds Committee.
