The district is exploring ways to run a virtual day if the New Jersey Department of Health advises it to shut down its schools due to the coronavirus, district Superintendent Erik Gundersen said Friday afternoon.

“As long as the district provided a plan to the county Department of Education on what a virtual day would look like, the school could be allowed to use a virtual day as a school day,” Gundersen said. “We’re currently in the process of finalizing that application to send to the county later on today.”

Gundersen said that the district also would continue instruction virtually through a platform like Zoom or Canvas for individual students or teachers who have to be quarantined at home. The district experimented with three virtual days on Feb. 12 of 2014 and Feb. 2 and 3 of 2016, but the New Jersey State Department of Education ruled that virtual days cannot count as school days.

“We’re well positioned to run a virtual day,” Gundersen said. 

A meeting among administrators to discuss the district’s precautions to the coronavirus was held on Monday, March 2. 

“We discussed the memo that was sent out by the Department of Health on how schools should respond, and we addressed each and every point to make sure we’re in a good place and have a plan moving forward,” Gundersen said.

PV’s DECA trip from April 29 until May 2 to Nashville, Tennessee, Greece trip from April 3 to April 11, and Italy and Greece trip from March 31 to April 12 are all still scheduled to run. 

However, Gundersen said the trip to Spain was cancelled. The district’s robotics team, The Pascack Pi-oneers, had their FIRST Mid-Atlantic competition in Mount Olive called off by Mount Olive High School. The competition was scheduled from Friday, March 6 to Sunday, March 8.

“I’ve informed all the teachers who are taking students on trips that there’s a strong likelihood of their trips being cancelled.” Gundersen said. “The district is taking each trip on a case-by-case basis. We are evaluating what the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and the Department of Health are saying and recommendations from the New Jersey Department of Education. We’re consulting with other school districts to exchange any ideas on what they are doing.”

If a trip is cancelled, Gundersen said the district wants to work with the trip chaperones to minimize the amount of money that students and parents might lose from cancellation fees.

“The last thing I want to happen is have a student get sick, carry the virus, and spread it to others when they’re back here,” Gundersen said. “If the situation gets worse worldwide and they’re out of the country, there could be a point when the U.S. says that they have to be quarantined — not to mention how our public students, parents, and staff would feel with having students come back to the building who have been in an area with a higher rate of the coronavirus.”

The coronavirus has made its way into New Jersey with two people testing positive in Fort Lee and Englewood, according to The Bergen Record. Within PV and PH, Gundersen said the district has increased the frequency of cleaning during the school days and evenings.