Spartan Newsroom (https://news.jrn.msu.edu/author/casti177/)
My name is Tyler Castillo and I'm a journalism major at Michigan State class of 2022. My passion is to talk sports whether that is covering them live, talking about them with others, or the classic debates. Another passion of mine is also journalism. I love finding a great story and unraveling the information from within.
With 478,000 cases of COVID-19, Michigan alone has more cases than Australia, Greece and Sweden. Going on a year living in a pandemic, essential workers across industries are suffering from the changes set on by the outbreak of COVID-19 in America.
The East Lansing School Board grappled with plans for winter school and how teachers can use a three-tier mental health system to help online students. The board’s Nov. 9 meeting occurred over Zoom and the focus was returning from remote learning to in-person instruction after winter break.
St. Gerard Catholic schools just had a run-in with the COVID-19 virus and had to move to strictly online learning for a two week period. From Oct. 19t-30 This came after three new reported cases. One came from a teacher, another from a teachers’ aide, and one from an office staff person.
Principal Ray Rzepecki said that at first just the teacher had tested positive for COVID-19 so the school put her class in quarantine and had her teach online for two weeks. After this, the aide tested positive and moved another class into quarantine. With the office staff member testing positive, the school decided to move everything online for two weeks.
East Lansing’s Tasty Twist ice cream shop has been handling COVID-19 and the pandemic from the business point of view since early March. Scott King, the owner of Tasty Twist, said that things have been going up, even with some small setbacks.
King said, “They’ve been fairly good. I don’t think it’s really 100% because I think that there are folks that are out there that don’t want to leave their homes with everything going on, but, we are doing better than expected.”
King touched on how Tasty Twist, located on 1137 E Grand River Ave, didn’t have to technically shut down but still did for the safety of their community and customers.
King said, “Our license with the health department and city says we are considered carryout. We closed for 6 weeks in March up until May 1st because of how strict the governor’s orders were and the safety of our customers.”
MSUvote’s foundation is built on reaching out to student voters and getting them to perform in their civic duty.
MSUvote is a nonpartisan group that tells students that their vote counts and is important and that voting is a great way to have your voice heard and make an impact.
Co-chair of the MSU vote coalition Renee Brown reaches out to the student voters, even if most on-campus classes are down. Brown said that the main focus is to get as many people as possible to register to vote.
“Registration, Education, Participation,” said Brown. “The whole focus is that the students have the information that they need.”
The East Lansing Hannah Community Center has slowly started to open its recreational services to the community. East Lansing Parks and Recreation Director Tim McCaffrey made the call to reopen the center. Hannah and all its activities have been closed since the middle of March. But since Sept. 20 the center has opened its fitness center and pool with certain guidelines in place.
McCaffrey said, “We followed the guidelines for re-opening based off of Gov. Whitmer’s orders, the CDC, and the Ingham public health officials.”
McCaffrey said it was important to open the community center, “We believed that it was important to start a partial phased reopening because I think our community was very interested in looking at that. We have a number of people in our community who come to the community center for physical activity and a sense of socialness.”
Lois Fogarasi guest services and accounts coordinator shed light on reopening procedures.