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BUCHANAN – Buchanan High School students got an unplanned remote day of instruction to begin the week with on Monday.

A communication to parents and students of Buchanan High School went out this morning that due to a teacher shortage, students would be returned back home if they had already shown up for the day and were expected to complete their assignments on Google Classrooms.

“We had some teaches were scheduled to be out. In normal circumstances, we would have been able to handle that,” said Buchanan Community Schools Superintendent Patricia Robinson. “We had some teachers who got sick this morning, which put us overboard of the number of teachers that were out. We could not get substitute teachers at all. That was the problem.”

Students had already begun showing up at the high school when the call to have a remote day was made.

Bus routes begin for Buchanan Community Schools at 5:40 a.m., and breakfast at the high school starts at 7 a.m. Classes typically begin at 7:40 a.m.

Buses were coordinated to return students home around 8:30 a.m. who had taken the transportation.

Buchanan High School Principal Stacey DeMaio said all teachers had uploaded assignments to the Google Classrooms platform prior to the day’s start.

“They’ve had Google Classrooms all year as the platform,” DeMaio said. “[Teachers] who were able to, will have live Google Meets.”

Throughout the year, educators have been uploading their plans to Google Classrooms to be prepared in both remote and in-person formats.