Elementary school students in Lake County returned to school on Monday to find their classrooms set up a little differently.
See-through partitions made with PVC pipes and vinyl separate students when sitting at their desks to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Timothy Totten serves as the managing partner of Final Embrace, the local business hired by the school district to build the barriers.
“We hired more than 50 temporary employees for this project alone,” he said. “So far we’ve made over 3,000 of this barrier.”
Totten told News 6 they are still in the process of making around 900 more barriers for the district.
Among those helping build them is parent Kaley Durden.
“I normally take care of kids,” she said. “I can feel the kids are little more protected and they don’t have to wear their mask all day. "
Totten said they worked with the school district over the past few weeks to come up with a solution for students.
“I’ve seen adults that can barely handle a mask for more than an hour and we ask kids to do it for six, seven, eight hours a day,” he said. “This lets them still socialize with the other students in that classroom, but still have a barrier.”
Classrooms once torn apart, now sewn back together one stitch at a time.
“At school, [students] should be able to relax and have fun with their friends and by doing this, they’re able to [relax],” Darden said.