26 new COVID-19 cases reported at Wake County schools in the past week. Here’s where.
The Wake County school system reported 26 new confirmed COVID-19 cases over the past week, just as more than 20,000 elementary students are set to begin daily in-person instruction on Monday.
The latest update to the school district’s COVID-19 metrics page on Thursday showed 26 cases reported over the last seven days, including three potentially connected cases at Reedy Creek Middle School in Cary.
There have been 51 cases reported by the district since Oct. 26, when students began returning for in-person instruction.
Wake elementary and middle schools have reopened for in-person instruction on a limited basis, splitting students into small enough groups to try to keep class sizes down to maintain 6 feet of social distancing.
But starting Monday, kindergarten through third-grade students will begin getting daily instruction, with 18 or 19 students in the classrooms. Some smaller classrooms, especially in older elementary schools, can only provide three feet of social distancing.
“We have many classrooms in the district that with the full K-3 classrooms will not be able to social distance at 6 feet,” Wake County Superintendent Cathy Moore said at this week’s school board meeting. “We understand that, and so it’s just what can you do. It should be at least 3 feet.”
In an email sent to parents Thursday, Wake said that schools “will continue to social distance whenever possible, but K-3 classrooms are not expected to maintain six feet of space between desks or students if space does not allow.”
Also on Monday, thousands of Wake fourth- and fifth-grade students will begin returning for in-person instruction on the three-week rotation plan of one week of in-person classes and two weeks of online classes. Their class sizes will be small this semester.
Schools with reported cases
Cases have been reported this week at these Wake schools:
▪ Adams Elementary (1 case)
▪ Apex High (1 case)
▪ Baileywick Elementary (1 case)
▪ Brentwood Elementary (1 case)
▪ Broughton High (1 case, possibly related to an earlier one)
▪ Cary High (1 case)
▪ Cedar Fork Elementary (1 case)
▪ Durant Road Middle (1 case)
▪ Fuller Elementary (1 case)
▪ Green Hope Elementary (1 case)
▪ Heritage Elementary (1 case)
▪ Joyner Elementary (2 cases)
▪ Oakview Elementary (1 case)
▪ Phillips High (1 case)
▪ Reedy Creek Elementary (1 case)
▪ Reedy Creek Middle (3 cases that are all possibly linked)
▪ River Bend Middle (1 case)
▪ Salem Elementary (1 case)
▪ Sycamore Creek Elementary (1 case)
▪ Vandora Springs Elementary (1 case)
▪ Wakefield Elementary (1 case)
▪ Wakefield Middle (1 case)
▪ Wake Young Men’s Leadership Academy (1 case)
Plans for next semester
School administrators are recommending that next semester all elementary students not in the Virtual Academy get daily in-person instruction. With the larger class sizes in fourth-and fifth-grades, Moore said classrooms could have 25 to 26 students in them and as many as 31 students.
“This is a question that many school boards are grappling with,” school board member Jim Martin asked at Tuesday’s meeting. “How do we justify moving into a situation where we cannot keep the distance?”
Under that spring semester plan, middle school and high schools would operate on the three-week rotation of in-person and online classes. High school students are the only group in Wake not getting any in-person instruction this semester.
Under current state rules, only elementary schools can use Plan A, where there are no limits on school capacity and 6 feet of social distancing is recommended but not required in classrooms.
“There is fundamentally great uncertainty as to Plan A at this time,” Dr. Danny Benjamin of the ABC Science Collaborative told the board on Tuesday. “There is simply no data to support or refute it.”
The ABC Science Collaborative, which was started at Duke University, is helping school districts like Wake County work through school reopening issues.
Benjamin said that the 6 feet of distancing helps interrupt transmission when people are not wearing face masks, are wearing them improperly or are breathing heavily.
Schools cited as safe for students
New COVID-19 cases are spiking in North Carolina and nationally. The state hit a daily record for new cases on Wednesday and a new record Thursday for hospitalizations.
But state health officials say that school reopening isn’t driving the increase because children are less likely to catch and transmit COVID-19 than adults.
In a district as large as Wake, which has 160,000 students and 195 schools, Benjamin said it’s reasonable to expect an average of one new confirmed COVID-19 case per week per school.
Wake school officials say that they are seeing cases where some families who are not in the Virtual Academy are refusing to send their children for in-person instruction. Wake is continuing to educate those students virtually.
But Benjamin said that keeping schools closed might be worse for COVID-19 prevention than safe opening. He cited how Wake is promoting use of the 3Ws: wearing a face covering, maintaining social distancing and regularly washing hands.
“The hours spent in schools with the 3Ws enforced are almost certainly safer on a population basis, or across public health, versus the hours spent in the community where the 3Ws are typically not enforced,” Benjamin said.
Wake’s school COVID-19 dashboard
Wake began publishing a list of schools with confirmed COVID-19 cases, when students returned to class. The page, www.wcpss.net/Page/46136, is updated each Thursday although families and staff at schools are notified sooner when a case is confirmed.
“The lesson that we want readers of this page to take away, it’s really straightforward,” Tim Simmons, Wake’s chief communications officer said Tuesday. “The school system cannot eliminate COVID-19 from the community, but it can slow and even stop the spread of the virus inside the school.”
Simmons said that single cases inside schools are inevitable. But he cautioned against using it at a scoreboard to say that one school is doing a better or worse job than another.
This story was originally published November 12, 2020 at 4:36 PM.
