Students in Madison County Schools have only a few more days of summer break before they head back to the classroom on Aug. 4.
The start of the school year is normally both exciting and nerve-racking.
That's exactly the case this year with many students heading back to the classroom after the COVID-19 pandemic made this past academic year anything but normal.
Ãå±±ÂÖ¼é spoke with a mom whose son hasn't stepped foot in a school in 16 months.
On Wednesday, Drake Barber is going to walk into a school for the first time since March of 2020. His mom, Kelley Barber, said they're ready for him to be back in the classroom, but she's also a little nervous since the number of coronavirus cases is on the rise again.
“I am slightly worried about it. We both have the same vaccine and we were exposed to several people closely who ended up with that variant, and, so far, the vaccine seems to have really done its job because if we got it, we didn’t know it," said Kelley.
Drake is 17 years old and has Down syndrome.
According to a study done in the U.K., people with Down syndrome are 10 times more likely to die from the coronavirus. That's why Drake's family waited until he was vaccinated to let him go back into the classroom and play some sports.
“I’m really excited for him to get back into socializing with his friends. He’s excited to get back into the gym and playing basketball," said Kelley. "It’s going to be a really good year, I hope. I hope everything goes really well."
Drake is going to be a freshman at New Hope High School. After spending more than a year outside of a classroom, his family is preparing him to get back into the swing of things.
"He is a planner. He likes to talk about things every day, what he’s doing the next day and the next five days," Kelley explained.
"Within the past month I've started letting him know, ‘Hey, this many days until the first day of school,’ and he wasn’t too excited, but the more we’ve talked about it and including basketball, and his old teacher coming, and all that, he’s finally, I think he’s actually pretty excited.â€
Madison County Schools start back up on Wednesday.
