Union Academy students are currently learning from a distance because too many staff members are quarantining for COVID-19.
Principal Diane Cotton said the school has been very diligent about practicing prevention measures. Unfortunately, multiple Union Academy staff members have tested positive for the virus anyway and now seven staff members are in quarantine, including six school staff members and one additional county employee. The next most important prevention measure is minimizing contact. That means keeping those teachers out of school until they’re cleared, and by extension, shifting their classes online.
“We had a couple of staff members test positive and although we are very careful about social distancing and masks, the CDC guidelines for adults are stricter than for students,” Cotton said. “As a result, we had too many staff members quarantined to allow the school to remain face-to-face.”
The announcement came on Tuesday, Aug. 31, seven class days into the new school year. Macon County Schools received some pushback in recent weeks over its decisions about how to handle the ongoing pandemic in the new school year, most notably the decision to require face coverings until public health recommendations suggest they can safely do otherwise. Superintendent Chris Baldwin said this incident won’t likely have much bearing on the Board of Education’s COVID-19 policies.
“This was a unique situation both in terms of method of exposure and personnel involved,” Baldwin said. “It will not have a significant impact on how we handle mitigation strategies moving forward.”
Lead School Nurse Julie Rogers has spoken in support of the school system’s efforts. Some COVID-19 exposure is nearly inevitable at this stage of the pandemic, but masking and other prevention efforts have helped keep students in school and schools open.
“I’m grateful that we’re wearing masks in school,” Rogers said. “We’ve had a couple of situations this week where we did not have excessive quarantines because of the new guidelines that allow us to keep students in class if they’ve been appropriately wearing their masks, so that has helped us in a couple of situations to keep the numbers low.”
There have been three more COVID-19 related deaths in Macon County since Aug. 27. Surges in COVID-19 cases around the nation, the state and the region have left hospitals with a startling shortage of open intensive care unit beds as unvaccinated patients experience critical symptoms. While masking and social distancing are important preventions strategies, Macon County Public Health continues to urge all eligible citizens to get vaccinated as the single most important step to fighting the virus.
Union Academy is scheduled to reopen for in-person instruction on Monday, Sept. 13.