This story was updated Dec. 12 to include the district's most updated case counts for the past two weeks, Nov. 30 through Dec. 11.
Since Chatham County Schools partially reopened for students under Plan B on Oct. 19, there have been 19 positive COVID-19 cases among students and 22 among staff, according to the district’s COVID-19 Tracking dashboard and administrators.
The dashboard, first posted online the week Pre-K, K-2 and E.C. Extended Content Standard students returned to hybrid learning in October, says it tracks cumulative cases since Aug. 17, the district’s first day of classes.
But the tracker only includes information on students who’ve been inside CCS buildings since Oct. 19.
“We decided to only track what we were aware of at each building,” said Tracy Fowler, executive director of student support services.
Fowler said there were no guarantees parents would share infections of students not in the building — such as those attending Virtual Academy or still doing completely remote learning.
Chatham has about 8,600 students in 19 schools, and about 1,000 faculty and staff members. Health officials have said that as the number of cases in Chatham and North Carolina increase, it’s reasonable to expect cases within schools. Officials have emphasized the importance of limiting spread from such positive cases through COVID-19 protocol like wearing masks and social distancing. At the end of the day Friday, there had been six new cases among students last week and four among staff — with 24 new positive cases reported in the last two weeks.
Currently, all Pre-K, K-8 and E.C. Extended Content Standard students have the option of attending school in-person under a hybrid learning schedule — making up nearly 6,000 students. Students in 3rd-5th grade were able to return Nov. 19, while approximately 2,100 middle school students had the option to return on Monday. All high school students are attending virtual classes, with the exception of E.C. Extended Content Standard students.
“We try to update (the COVID-19 tracking page) in real time,” said Amanda Hartness, the assistant superintendent for academic services and instructional support, clarifying that the dashboard is updated every day if there are new cases. Some surrounding districts have chosen to update their trackers on a weekly basis. “But we also make sure that communication flow is appropriate. So we do not put a case on the tracker until we have made sure that communication has gone out.”
The page lists 34 cases among staff, with 12 of those positive cases reported between the first day of classes and the first day of hybrid learning. If staff work at multiple schools, the tracker says, it will be reported at both locations. That’s in an effort to be transparent, the district said, so that people don’t hear of a case at their school and subsequently lose trust in the reporting if they don’t see it reflected on the tracker.
Still, not everyone thinks the tracker is sufficiently transparent. Corbie Hill, a CCS parent whose wife works in-person at three Chatham schools, said the current set-up of the spreadsheet doesn’t allow anyone to track trends within the district unless they had the foresight to write down the cases at the end of each week. The tracker has a column for cumulative cases since Aug. 17 as well as a column for new cases in the current week.
“Unless you had been tracking it from then, you can’t get an accurate impression of what actually happened,” Hill said. “We just have these numbers that are completely divorced from their meaning.”
Aside from updating the tracker to include week-by-week counts, Hill thinks the district needs to set a threshold for when schools would shut back down, based on the number of positive COVID-19 cases.
“It’s not a huge number of people in the school buildings right now,” he said. “So when I look at those numbers, it’s kind of grim. It affects me emotionally even though it’s something I’m compelled to look at.”
The district can learn of positive cases from the Chatham County Public Health Department, an individual person or a parent, Fowler said. When a positive case is identified, the district first notifies any close contacts and then sends out letters to a school’s community members before updating the tracker. Currently, there have not been any clusters within the district, defined as five or more cases linked to each other. Fowler said there also has not been evidence of community spread either.
“There’s only one case I can even think of that there is a possibility that there would’ve been any connection at all within the building,” she said. “There’s been no spread among children to each other or to staff members, or staff members to children.
“The measures we have in place are really, really helpful as far as that’s concerned,” she added.
The CCS tracker does not currently have a column to indicate clusters, should they occur, but Fowler said the district will work with the health department to report any occurring clusters. After this article was originally published, the district added a note under the tracker spreadsheet that reads: "If clusters are ientified by the Chatham Health Department, the chart will be updated and indicate this." Clusters from K-12 schools are also recorded on the N.C. Dept. of Health and Human Services’ website, which currently lists 39 of them — with an associated 730 cases — as having been reported in K-12 schools across the state. This count also includes private schools. There are no reported clusters in Chatham listed on the state’s report, either at CCS or in Chatham’s charter or private schools.
In surrounding and larger counties, there have been a larger number of positive cases. At Wake County Schools, the district reported 80 new confirmed cases over the past week among students and staff, reporting 68 cases at 49 schools the week before — with the weekly total rising each week since schools partially reopened Oct. 26. In Wake, the Raleigh News & Observer reported that health officials said it’s reasonable to expect one new case at each of its 190 schools each week.
“We’ve had an increasing number of students coming in each week as well as just an increasing number of contacts between people,” Tim Simmons, Wake’s chief communications officer, said at last Tuesday’s school board meeting, the N&O reported. “You don’t want to see increasing cases, but it’s to be expected.”
On Friday, the Wake County school board scheduled a special work session for Monday to discuss the possibility of switching to remote instruction in response to the surge of COVID-19 cases in the state and Wake County.
In Chatham, the school board will also meet Monday, but for its regular session meeting. The agenda currently includes "COVID-19 Updates, Discussions, and Considerations," specifying that discussion "could include but not be limited to reopening progress and determination of any next steps." At prior meetings, the board discussed potentially also sending high school students back to school for hybrid learning before the Jan. 15 date they'd previously voted to extend Plan C through.
Fowler said the district does not currently have a metric for shutting the schools down, but that it would work with the health department in the event of significant community spread in the schools. Hartness added that one of the biggest concerns, apart from folks getting sick, would be if spread were significant enough that too many teachers were unable to teach.
For now though, Fowler said the district is really pleased with how protocol has been followed at the schools.
“I think that it’s gone really well,” she said. “I think (students) want to be in school, they want to be able to participate, so we’ve had a lot of success there. As long as we follow these guidelines, I think we’re in a good place.”
Hill questioned whether such positive communication from the district is helpful in informing parents and students.
“I feel like the communication has been overwhelmingly and almost exaggeratedly positive,” he said. “I would feel much more comfortable if the communication for the district balanced, ‘Here’s what we’re trying, here’s what we think is gonna work, here’s where we are in terms of infections.’ That’s much more trustworthy.”
Reporter Hannah McClellan can be reached at hannah@chathamnr.com.