CHARLESTON, W.Va. – The first hearing in the case of the West Virginia Education Association v. The Honorable James Justice is next week in Kanawha Circuit Court.
First, after four major changes to the map, the group wants a return to the Harvard Global Health Institute system, president of the West Virginia Education Association, Dale Lee said on Talkline. The system uses an average of daily new cases per 100,000 people over the last seven days.
The association also wants an independent panel in a public setting to review the data used to determine the status.
“Tucker County and Barbour County, two counties that were green or yellow have to close schools because of a spread,” Lee said,” Well, that tells you there’s something wrong with the map.”
The Harvard Global Institute system places both Barbour and Tucker firmly in red status with an average 33 cases per 100,000 people each.
The current system uses whichever is better, the daily average positives or the percent positive.
In that formula Tucker County is green and Barbour County is yellow.
Tucker County Schools were forced to shift to remote for two weeks on September 30 when 4 students and 3 staff members tested positive, 25 more were in quarantine and not enough substitutes were available to fill the jobs.
“I believe we’ve constantly changed the map with goal of getting students in school full time and getting sports active,” Lee said,”I believe the constant changes have caused us to put people in an unsafe situation.”
“The Harvard map doesn’t shutdown the state, it allows for most of the counties to go back in-person,” Lee said,” But, it’s an independent group that’s coming up with a map to show what the levels are.”
There have been unconfirmed reports of people associated with athletic programs submitting to multiple COVID tests artificially driving the numbers down.
“Testing over and over and over again just to get the positivity rate to below 5 percent to make you go from, in many instances, from red to an orange to a green, that’s just wrong,” Lee said.
The lawsuit says the colors on the state map conflict directly with the data, active COVID cases nearly doubled from August 30 to September 30 going from 2,019 to 4,068.
“The safety issue of the manipulation and getting counties to go from orange and red to green,” Lee said,” You’re not following the safety guidelines you need to follow.”