With schools shut down until at least March 29 over concerns of spreading the coronavirus, it was business as usual for the Altoona Area School Board on Monday evening, although it was conducted in a different room.

To minimize the risk of spreading germs, the board moved its meeting to the auditorium where people could spread out.

Moving quickly through the agenda, the board decided to keep its adult education program. Board members chose to abandon last month’s suggestion to look at eliminating the program to save money after public outcry.

“We need to keep it,” board member Rick Hoover said. “We invite people to the meetings all the time, and I tell them their voices matter. They were very eloquent and made great points. I think it is very important to keep this program going.”

Board member Sharon Bream said that if the district would have shut the program down, it would have continued somewhere else.

“I think there is a misconception among the public that if we don’t continue this program, it goes away, but that is not the case.” she said. “The state will find someone else to run it.”

Board member Dave Francis said the program’s success is because of the way the district runs it and he doesn’t want someone else taking over.

“My point is to keep it with us because of our staff,” he said. “We have been very successful, so I would hate to pass it off to someone else.”

Board member Ron Johnson said he visited the Stev­ens building where the program is held to get a feel for it.

“I … talked to the instructors and students and asked them to convince me to keep it open,” he said. “They were just coming out of the rooms to talk to me about it.”