After teacher’s COVID death, NC school postpones plan to return to in-person learning
Eight days after its beloved elementary school PE teacher died of COVID-19, Lincoln Charter School on Monday night postponed a return to in-person learning until Feb. 1.
Jamie Seitz, 51, died of COVID-19 on Dec. 27. Seitz had taught PE and health and coached high school sports since 2009 at Lincoln Charter School, a public K-12 charter school in Lincoln County that has campuses in both Denver and Lincolnton.
The vote by the school board in a Zoom meeting came after a recommendation by Lincoln Charter chief administrator Jonathan Bryant. The school was originally supposed to resume remote learning on Tuesday and then return to in-person learning Jan. 11.
Instead, it will begin remote learning on Tuesday as scheduled, but then push out the in-person learning date until Feb. 1 and perhaps further, depending on the results of its next board meeting Jan. 19.
Bryant presented a chart during the hour-long school board meeting that showed a survey of 176 Lincoln Charter School’s teachers and staff. The survey showed that 74% wanted the school to stay on Plan C learning, which is North Carolina’s all-remote school plan. The same survey showed that 40% of teachers and staff said they were “not comfortable” returning to in-person learning at this time and only 10% said they were “’very comfortable.”
Bryant said teachers had been shaken by the death of a colleague and also pointed out Lincoln County’s COVID metrics on the state’s website. “We are in a red, critical area of the state,” Bryant said.
Seitz had a memorial service at Lincoln Charter School’s Denver campus Wednesday night, where he had taught and coached basketball, golf and volleyball. The service was attended by more than a thousand people, most of whom had to remain in their cars and listen to the service on the radio because of social distancing.
“Like many of our staff and families, I’m hoping to wake up from a very bad dream,” Bryant said during the school board meeting. “But we know that’s not the reality.”
Seitz had no underlying health conditions, according to his family. After being diagnosed with COVID-19 on Dec. 9, he also developed pneumonia. He left behind a wife, Liz, and their two teenage children, Carter and Peyton.
Seitz said in a Dec. 20 interview via text with The Charlotte Observer that he didn’t know how he became infected with COVID and that he had stayed “always masked and safe as could be.” At that time, a week before his death, Seitz was in the hospital but already planning how he would tell his Lincoln Charter classes about his fight against COVID and the family members, nurses and doctors who he hoped would pull him through.
“It’s a story I’ll (be) telling my classes for as long as I live,” Seitz wrote. “Family. Compassion. Toughness. Kindness. Perseverance. Humility. Hard work. Dedication.”
Lincoln Charter had a spike in COVID-19 cases in early December. Bryant said in a previous emergency school board meeting on Dec. 11 that on that date 20 teachers and/or teacher assistants at the Denver campus stayed home due to positive COVID-19 tests, either for their children or themselves.
Most of those are no longer active cases. Bryant said Monday night that there were two staff members who currently had tested positive for COVID-19, one at each of the school’s campuses.
This story was originally published January 4, 2021 at 9:22 PM.
