Area school districts have reported a total of at least 187 positive cases of COVID-19 since school began, according to the latest data from Clay and Noxubee county school districts.
By Wednesday, West Point Consolidated School District (WPCSD) had seen a total of 42 positive cases of COVID-19 among students and staff since the district switched from an all-virtual learning environment to offering both virtual and hybrid learning models Sept. 21, district officials said.
At WPCSD, all of its 2,866 students started school Aug. 31 online, Superintendent Burnell McDonald said. On Sept. 21, the district began offering the hybrid learning option to its students, and roughly 70 percent of all enrolled students — about 2,000 — opted for the model, he said, which allows students to learn in person two days a week and online for the rest.
Between then and Wednesday, however, the district witnessed 16 positive cases among students and 26 among staff, putting 79 students and 36 staff members under quarantine, McDonald said. Among those under quarantine were two elementary classes on different campuses, he said, which accounted for almost half of the quarantined students.
Noxubee County School District (NCSD) — a district with roughly 1,300 students — has seen a total of 35 students and staff testing positive since school began Aug. 17, with about 1,100 students learning all virtual and 200 enrolled in hybrid learning, Superintendent Rodriguez Broadnax told The Dispatch on Thursday evening. Three students tested positive on the high school football team earlier this month, he said, which led to the shutdown of the entire school for two weeks, and a wing of the middle school was also shut down due to an outbreak.
A total of about 140 Noxubee students and staff have been sent into quarantine, he said.
Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District, which has 3,297 students enrolled in traditional in-person learning, reported 46 positive cases among students and staff as of Oct. 23, The Dispatch reported. Lowndes County School District reported 45 positive cases, and Columbus Municipal School District reported the lowest — 19 — among all districts.
WPCSD and NCSD: Cases mostly among school staff
Compared to CMSD, which started school Aug. 6 and is also offering a hybrid schedule to roughly 2,000 students, WPCSD’s total case count, especially among staff members, are higher. But staff members who tested positive were mostly non-instructional, which means the chances of them bringing the virus into the classroom were lower, McDonald said. Overall, he said, the weekly counts did not show an upward or downward trend.
“You are talking about cafeteria workers, custodians (who tested positive),” he said. “… I didn’t see a drastic change in the number of positive cases or the number of quarantined cases over the last couple of weeks. It’s just pretty steady.”
At NCSD, Broadnax also said most positive cases took place among staff members, and contact tracing suggests there was staff-to-staff spread of the virus. Although the district saw at least two outbreaks in its high school and middle school, only six students tested positive, he said.
“There’s been staff-to-staff contact, whether they rode with that staff member to work or rode with them into the game or they came in contact with him at the bathroom for more than 15 minutes or whatever,” Broadnax said. “But … masks are required among students and staff. They have social distancing.”
Broadnax said he is “always concerned” about positive cases and student safety on campus, but he does not think the situation is alarming yet.
“I don’t really consider (the numbers) a high case count. I think when I get concerned is when I have to shut down an entire district, when I have to close all three schools at one time,” he said. “… We are trying to adapt to these COVID-19 cases but still keeping everybody safe. At the same time, learning is still taking place.”
Aiming to curb the virus spread, both districts have implemented several safety measures, including mask mandates, social distancing, limiting the capacity on buses and in classrooms and disinfecting high-touch areas and temperature checks, said Broadnax and WPCSD Assistant Superintendent Jermaine Taylor. They said they have confidence in the efficiency of the measures in place.
Broadnax said he will not consider canceling the hybrid model anytime soon, because the students need it. The model is only for pre-K and kindergarten students as well as those who have learning challenges.
“Our babies have to be in school,” Broadnax said. “… Research shows the best learning for them is hands-on. And how do we ask babies who are not disciplined enough to get on a device and learn directly from a device?”
McDonald said he believes the hybrid learning model has helped keeping the case count down among students, and the district will not open up traditional in-person learning because of the pandemic.
“We feel that the best instruction happens face-to face. Given the situation with COVID, we are not comfortable with doing it with … all students coming every day,” he said. “… We don’t want the schools to create an environment within the community that we caused the numbers to increase because we bring too many students back in.”
McDonald added that the district will not switch to an all-virtual environment as of now because he believes in the efficiency of the hybrid model. However, he said the district is ready for the change.
“Right now, despite what we are seeing across the country and the state, the numbers within West Point itself and the school district seems feasible for us to continue doing what we were doing,” he said. “Of course, if those numbers increase, we’ll definitely consider all virtual, which, at any point … we are prepared to go all virtual.”
Yue Stella Yu was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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