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Perry School District’s revamped response to the COVID-19 pandemic was put to the test less than a week after students returned to on-campus classes when a kindergarten teacher at Perryville Primary Center tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
According to a release issued by the district, the teacher reported the positive test result on Sept. 18. According to principal Emily Koenig, that teacher had not been at school since waking up with symptoms on the morning of Sept. 15.
“Because we know that people can be contagious up to two days before the onset of their symptoms, and because kindergartners aren’t always able to physically distance appropriately, the entire class was transitioned to online learning,” Koenig said, adding that a substitute teacher will handle online lessons for the students while the teacher recovers at home.
PCSD students returned to campus on Sept. 14 after the district suspended in-person learning on Sept. 7 in response to an increase in the risk assessment level issued by the Perry County Health Department.
“This aligns with our new focus on keeping as many students and staff in class on campus as safely possible,” said PCSD superintendent Andy Comstock, who outlined the district’s amended plans last week. “While the community is still at the moderately high risk alert level, our building impact was low, and the health department recommended only quarantining this classroom.”
In an interview with the Republic-Monitor last week, Comstock said the shift in strategy came after consultation with the local health department and careful observation of community spread.
“When we put our plan together back in July, the conventional wisdom was that if we had community spread of that much, then having kids coming to our schools would just basically be an incubator for passing the virus among different parts of the county,” said Comstock.
“It became apparent that obviously our assumptions in July were incorrect. We also got further guidance from [the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and Department of Health and Senior Services] that you should not have a global shutdown or a district-wide shutdown; that you should look at classrooms, buildings and whatever. And that’s basically what our plan is.”
In regard to the latest situation, Comstock said Monday that he is “confident that our other students at staff are safe at school.”
“We learned during our recent temporary closure ... that our schools are not contributing to the unknown community spread,” Comstock said. “All mitigation procedures are still being followed.”
According to the district, as long as the students from the kindergarten class do not develop symptoms, they will be back on campus on Sept. 29.
Since PCSD opened its doors for the 2020 fall semester on Aug. 26, the health department has reported 35 positive cases of COVID-19 among district staff and students, along with 117 close contacts.
Through Tuesday, the health department reported 676 total cases — including 626 lab-confirmed cases and 50 probable cases —75 of which are considered active cases.
According to health department assistant director and epidemiologist Liz House, Perry County’s daily seven-day average of new cases has continued to be more than 10 for the vast majority of days since the alert level was increased to orange, or “moderately high” at the end of August.
