230 students, 20 staff quarantined in 1 district. Wave of KY schools reduce in-person classes.

Just days after students in Jessamine County returned to in-person learning, at least 230 students and 20 staff members have been quarantined due to COVID-19.

The district decided to scale back in-person learning because the contact tracing for positive COVID-19 cases proved to be so challenging, said Superintendent Matt Moore.

“What has become evident is that due to the quarantine guidelines, with even just a single positive case report, it can be necessary to quarantine a much larger number of our students and staff than we had anticipated,” Moore said.

Moore said secondary schools have been the most impacted during the first days of in-person instruction and with rising positive case numbers in Kentucky and in Jessamine County, there was no sign that the challenge will lessen in the coming days.

The changes that schools in Jessamine -- which borders Fayette County -- have made after just a week and a half of in-person learning are typical of the uncertainty that some districts across the state have experienced this fall.

More than a half-dozen Kentucky school districts have announced a return to virtual instruction this week after their counties moved into the red category or because of a rise in the number of students or teachers who have tested positive or are in quarantine, according to Kentucky School Boards Association officials.

Officials at the state’s largest district, Jefferson County Schools, announced Thursday that because of COVID-19 cases in Louisville, it was not safe to begin a return to school on Oct. 22 as district staff had hoped.

As Fayette County is aiming for a limited return to in-person learning beginning Oct. 19, the COVID-19 death of a Winburn Middle permanent substitute teacher was announced Thursday and the day before, a positive coronavirus test for a Frederick Douglass High School football player. School board chairwoman Stephanie Spires said she has tentatively called a board meeting at 5 p.m. Wednesday to discuss the return to school plan.

Jessamine County’s Moore said several of his fellow superintendents in Central Kentucky tell him they are having issues with COVID-19 quarantines similar to that in his district.

In the week and a half since in-person learning started, Jessamine middle school students have been attending five days a week. After Oct. 26, middle school students will attend in person two days each week, with half of the students attending on Mondays and Wednesdays, the other half on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

All high school students are currently learning in person on the same two days, but they too will move to the new schedule, with only half of students in a school attending on a given day.

Moore said the change will reduce the number of students in middle and high schools, allowing for more separation and physical distancing and will also decrease the number of students who will be required to quarantine due to a school-related exposure.

Elementary students who are attending in-person classes five days a week will not be impacted by the change and will remain on their current schedules. Smaller class sizes, the ability to spread out more in the classroom, and a more limited number of contacts has led to a lower number of exposures, fewer quarantines, and a more sustainable schedule at the primary level, he said.

Despite the high number of quarantines during the in-person restart, only eight students and nine staff members in Jessamine actually tested positive during that time period. There have been no students or staff identified through contact tracing as having contracted the virus while at school, Moore said.

In one instance, kids on a parks and recreation athletic team tested positive, affecting Jessamine students.

The contact tracing guidelines still had to be followed, which resulted in quarantines “as a stopgap measure to try to break that chain of infection,” Moore said.

The Jessamine County Health Department has embedded a full-time contact tracer in the school district.

Some of the staff members who were quarantined had tested positive and some of their family members had tested positive. People who are quarantined can’t come back into school until they are given approval by the health department, he said.

“Having the ability to cover those classes with the number of staff that have been quarantined” has been a challenge, Moore said. However, students will not be assigned new teachers as a result of the changes.

The criteria for quarantine includes being within six feet of someone who is positive for more than 15 minutes. District officials have to look at seating assignments on buses and in classes to see who has been in contact with the students, Moore said.

Seventy percent of the district’s 8,300 students are engaged in in-person learning and 30 percent in virtual learning. Approximately 100 students will be switching to all virtual learning at the end of the current grading period, and 400 students have elected to transition back to in person.

Elsewhere in the state, Franklin County Superintendent Mark Kopp said Thursday his district was remaining on virtual learning because of a high number of coronavirus cases.

Martin County is returning from in-person to virtual learning on Friday, and Perry County, LaRue County, Fulton Independent and the Adair County districts made similar decisions this week, according to the school board association.

Lawrence County Schools moved from all in-person learning to all at-home learning through Friday, its superintendent said.

Floyd County Superintendent Danny Adkins said in letters to families this week that students at Floyd Central High School would move from all in-person learning to all virtual through Oct. 26 because 23 staff members at the school were under quarantine.

Russell County Superintendent Michael Ford on Thursday told families in a letter that his district was moving from in-person to virtual learning on Oct. 19 because cases in the county had been escalating and were at the red level the state considers critical. It could take weeks for the district to return to in-person learning , Ford said, and even then the district will switch to a hybrid level of in-person and virtual.

“This decision did not come lightly,” Ford said in a Twitter post.

Pikeville Independent Schools also moved to the worst incidence rate signified by the color red, but Superintendent David Trimble said in a Thursday message that students would stay on a hybrid schedule of virtual and in-person through Nov. 6.

As of Thursday, Kentucky’s K-12 COVID-19 School Report showed that over time 1,799 students and 779 staff members have tested positive for COVID-19.

This story was originally published October 16, 2020 at 1:14 PM.