Nicole Jones leads her class at Tenth Street Elementary School in Anderson in this September 2020 file photo. Submitted photo
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Second Semester
As predicted, surge in COVID-19 that affected some students in various schools and districts took place following the Thanksgiving holiday as families gathered against the advice of public health officials.
“After Fall Break, we added 2 cases associated with travel,” said Commander Jill Barker, superintendent at Anderson Preparatory Academy. “After Thanksgiving Break, we added 10 cases – nine of which were associated with travel or social gatherings and one associated with a non-COVID related hospital stay for medical testing.”
Still, she and officials in most schools and districts serving students in Madison County and surrounding communities anticipate returning to class next week for the start of the spring semester even though the exposure conditions over the winter holidays remain similar to those at Thanksgiving.
Some have discussed the possibility of having elementary students return to full-time in-person classes while putting in place hybrid instruction for secondary students until mid-January, consistent with the number of quarantine days required following an exposure to COVID-19.
For instance, Ron Green, superintendent at Shenandoah Schools Corp., said his district will follow the advice of the Henry County Health Department and start the semester with remote learning, returning to in-person instruction on Jan. 19.
ANDERSON — Holy Cross School is the only school serving students in Madison County or surrounding communities that appears to have been able to complete the fall semester without a single reported case of COVID-19 among either students or staff.
Since The Herald Bulletin performed a baseline assessment in August in which there were other schools and districts that started the 2020-2021 school year without any positive cases, most schools have moved into the double digits. However, nearly every district reported that the number of cases reported were due to community spread and not because of spread within their buildings.
“Holy Cross School did not participate in athletics this semester. We have had quite a few negative test results and have not had to trace our students or staff. We have been blessed,” said Principal Tina Neal.
As a result, Holy Cross, which according to the Indiana Department of Education has 173 students enrolled, has not had to turn to alternatives to in-person instruction as many other schools and districts in the area have had to do as the pandemic surged as predicted in the fall.
“I predicted that the second wave would be sooner than it was and was shocked when it didn’t arrive according to my prediction,” Neal said. “I’m still amazed at how well we have done. Our success has come from extra precautions made by every person who enters our building. Such precautions as staying home when not feeling well, multiple hand washing breaks, masks being worn, and daily temperature checks have paid off immensely.”
Most districts and schools weren’t so lucky.
With more than 80 cases reported to the Indiana State Board of Health, South Madison Community Schools experienced the highest number of incidents among students. The next highest was 54 at Frankton’s schools.
About 900 of the South Madison district’s 4,388 students opted for virtual-only education.
“We anticipate that number to be lower for the second semester, particularly for elementary students who have decided to return to in-person instruction,” South Madison Superintendent Mark Hall said.
Each of the district’s schools experienced positive cases at some point during the first semester. However, only individual classrooms rather than entire buildings ever were required to quarantine for 14 days as a result of positive tests or contact tracing, he said.
None of the three days of e-learning at the elementary level was because of COVID-19 exposure.
However, at the secondary level, students who chose the in-person instruction were in class 69 of 91 days, for a rate of 76%, Hall said. The secondary schools have run for eight weeks on a hybrid schedule in which students alternate between in-person and online instruction to reduce the number of students in the classroom at any given time, he added.
“Generally speaking, we have not seen many instances, where individual,” he said. “A was positive and came to school and infected individual B. The vast majority of our positive cases have been tracked back to interactions with positive individuals outside of the school setting, We did see more positive cases after we returned from fall break. When the level of community spread increased in early November, we adjusted our operation based on our plan and moved our secondary students to a hybrid schedule.”
At 41, Anderson Community Schools, the largest district by far in the area, experienced the highest number of positive cases among staff. ACS Superintendent Joe Cronk said though there’s no real way of knowing, it seems likely that most of those who tested positive were exposed outside the school setting.
ACS is the only district that remained virtual most of the semester, except for a few weeks in October.
“Everything is pretty fluid, and ever changing. You have to anticipate potential problems before they happen and put mitigation strategies into place ... very much more so than in a non-pandemic,” Cronk said.
Districts are not required to report to the state how many students who have been exposed or tested positive were athletes, but some districts have tracked that information. Among those that do, Lapel and Madison-Grant United School Corp. each reported 18 student-athletes who have tested positive for COVID-19.
For Madison-Grant, that amounted to more than half of the total of 33 students in general who tested positive over the course of the fall semester.
“A challenge that we did not expect, but have readily adapted to, is the frequency in which the factors for quarantine and isolation changed. There were weeks, especially at the beginning of the school year, where the factors for quarantine changed two to three times in one week,” said Madison-Grant Superintendent Scott Deetz.
The key to successfully navigating the pandemic, the superintendents and principals said, is flexibility.
Bobby Fields, superintendent of Frankton-Lapel Community Schools, said even though Frankton had 54 and Lapel had 49 students who tested positive, there were “huge” numbers of students who were not allowed to attend in-person classes because of contact with others who were positive.
“In an effort to eliminate students not being allowed at school because of contact tracing, we are implementing our hybrid schedule at the middle and high schools. Half of our students will attend school every other day,” he said. “We will be able to better socially distance students and virtually eliminate the possibility of anyone getting caught in contact tracing.”
Kevin Plew, administrator at Anderson Christian School, said his middle and high schools were out four weeks due to exposures and helping to flatten the curve. In addition, four elementary classes were out for two weeks due to exposure.
“I think we all would like to change the fact that COVID continues to be a problem and affects so many,” he said. “I think that we agree that education has been hampered by the ineffectiveness of virtual learning as an inferior substitute to in-person instruction.”
Commander Jill Barker, superintendent at Anderson Preparatory Academy, lamented the unpredictability of COVID-19 and the necessary response, saying it takes a toll on everyone involved.
“The lack of patterns and trends has made it very hard to plan outside of a day-by-day and week-by-week basis, which has been very frustrating,” she said. “You want to provide stability for your teachers, students and families, but a pandemic that is changing every second due to new research and data makes that almost impossible.”
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