HUNTSVILLE — Due to rising coronavirus cases and quarantines, Scott County Schools is switching to virtual learning for the remainder of this week, after Tuesday, the school system announced on Monday.
All students scheduled to be in class on Tuesday will attend. For the final three days of the week, however, students will switch to virtual learning. Friday was already set aside as a virtual learning day.
The county’s Board of Education had already voted to extend Thanksgiving break for the entirety of next week. Students and teachers will be off Monday, November 23, through Friday, November 27. The school system’s Central Office will also be closed. Previously, November 23-24 were scheduled as regular school days.
The Oneida Special School District will also be closed for Thanksgiving break all of next week, November 23-27. OSSD students will be on a virtual schedule this Thursday and Friday, as well as the Monday and Tuesday after Thanksgiving break, November 30-December 1.
County students will report back to class on November 30. Currently, Scott High students are scheduled to return to a full schedule that week for the first time in over a month.
Quarantines have been a disruption in schools for weeks, but the number of students actually testing positive for coronavirus is now increasing as well. The TN Dept. of Health reported four new cases involving school-aged children in Scott County on Monday, bringing the total number of children ages 5-18 with coronavirus during the month of November to 52. That’s significantly more, through the first 16 days of the month, than the 29 who tested positive during the entire month of October.
There were a record 43 new coronavirus cases reported in Scott County on Monday, pushing the number of active cases locally to 273.
Even as the number of school-aged kids testing positive for coronavirus has increased, that age group’s share of the total cases in Scott County has not drastically increased. School-aged children are responsible for 15% of Scott County’s total new cases since November 1. Since the coronavirus pandemic began, children in that age group have made up about 14% of total cases.
