Community Corner
COVID Leaves Mark On Early School Start With Quarantines, Viral Photos
Quarantined classes and viral photos of crowded hallways are marking an anxious first week of school for Georgia students.
By Ross Williams
August 5, 2020
Find out what's happening in Across Georgiafor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Quarantined classes and viral photos of crowded hallways are marking an anxious first week of school for Georgia students in some of the state’s earliest-opening school districts, especially in Cherokee County where more than 60 students and school employees were sent home so far after several positive COVID-19 tests.
Georgia students are among the first in the country to head back to school during the pandemic after months of social distancing, and the nation is watching. Many districts are postponing the start of the school year until later in August or September, or starting the year exclusively online. Meanwhile, students in a handful of districts in addition to Cherokee, including Bartow, Columbia and Paulding counties, came back to the classroom this week.
Find out what's happening in Across Georgiafor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Parents at three Cherokee schools received letters Wednesday on the third day of classes that their children had come in contact with someone who tested positive or might have been exposed to COVID-19.
A first-grade student at Hasty Elementary School Fine Arts Academy and an eighth-grade student at Dean Rusk Middle School both came to school on Monday and were later diagnosed with COVID-19. A kindergarten teacher at R.M. Moore Elementary School also developed symptoms after school Monday. The teacher has not received a positive test, but a family member of the teacher has since tested positive, district spokeswoman Barbara Jacoby said.
None of the three had symptoms when they came to school Monday, and they all stayed home Tuesday and Wednesday, Jacoby said.
That adds up to more than 60 Cherokee schools students or employees who will quarantine for two weeks. At Hasty Elementary the child’s teacher, three classmates and seven students from the after-school program must quarantine for two weeks. At Dean Rusk Middle School, 15 students will quarantine, but no staff members. And at R.M. Moore a teacher, paraprofessional and 16 students will quarantine.
Schools are arranging to provide education to the quarantined students, Jacoby said.
Tuesday, 20 students in a second-grade class at Cherokee’s Sixes Elementary were sent home for two weeks after a student there received a positive test. The school’s quarantine made national news.
Last month, the debate over whether to require students to wear masks in brick-and-mortar classrooms played out at school board meetings across the state and one held in Cherokee showed divisions between people pushing for more safety and those staunchly against mandating face coverings.
On Wednesday, two high school students from two Columbia County schools reported positive COVID-19 tests.
“Because the Columbia County School District has approximately 3,400 employees and more than 28,000 students, unfortunately it can be expected that there will be instances of positive cases of COVID-19, hopefully on a very limited basis,” spokeswoman Abbigail Remkus said by email.
School began Aug. 3 in Columbia County and high school students there alternate every other day between in-person and online study.
The two were asymptomatic at the time they were tested, Remkus said. When a student or employee tests positive for COVID-19, the district will send letters to the families of the students who have been in direct contact with that person, but not every case will be made public, she said.
“We will not make public reports of every incident involving this virus, but we will follow with fidelity the protocols and inform individuals who may be affected, while we will also respect the privacy of individuals who have contracted the virus,” she said.
Superintendent Sandra Carraway told WRDW in Augusta someone at a third school also tested positive, but parents there had not yet been notified.
As quarantines begin, photos from inside school campuses are raising concerns about the feasibility of slowing the spread of COID-19 in crowded schools.
Students squeezed together to pose for maskless senior photos outside two Cherokee County schools, Sequoyah High School in Canton and Etowah High School in Woodstock. An Instagram account associated with the school district shared one of the pictures, but it was later taken down. Masks are not required for Cherokee County students.
Those two shots, along with a photograph of a North Paulding High School hallway packed with mostly mask-free students went viral, attracting widespread criticism on social media as well as the attention of media outlets from the Washington Post to TMZ.com.
In a message to parents, Paulding County Superintendent Brian Otott conceded the photo “does not look good,” but said it was taken out of context.
“Class changes at the high school level are a challenge when maintaining a specific schedule,” he said. “It is an area we are continuing to work on in this new environment to find practicable ways to further limit students from congregating.”
North Paulding High School parents received a letter from Principal Gabe Carmona Aug. 2, the day before school began, informing them that members of the school football team had tested positive for COVID-19.
Masks will remain optional at Paulding County Schools, Otott said.
“Wearing a mask is a personal choice and there is no practical way to enforce a mandate to wear them,” he said.
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This story was originally published by the Georgia Recorder. For more stories from the Georgia Recorder, visit GeorgiaRecorder.com.
