With COVID-19 cases surging throughout the county, Chartiers Valley, like many other school districts, has halted in-person classes until at least early December.
After reporting four new covid cases this week, Chartiers Valley announced yesterday that all classes will be held remotely through Dec. 4.
More than 150 CV students and 20 staff members are currently in quarantine for possible exposure to the virus.
School officials hope that two weeks of remote learning will help avert the staffing shortage that could occur if an increasing number of teachers have to stay at home in quarantine.
In that scenario, students attending classes in-person would get all of the educational benefit of being taught by a substitute teacher, or by a rotating cast of substitute teachers, if quarantine rates continued to grow.
School superintendent Johanna Vanatta told the Post-Gazette that:
“[The hiatus will] give us a two-week hiatus so the community would be able to identify other cases prior to coming into our buildings.
“I don’t think this proactive approach is going to stop positive cases, but again, it will be preventative measures to eliminate potential staffing matters due to quarantines,”
—Chartiers Valley superintendent Johanna Vanatta, via Post-Gazette.com
New York City guidelines call for school closings when more than 3% of the area’s Covid-19 tests are positive. The threshold in Indianapolis is 13%, according to the Wall Street Journal. Iowa considers school closings when the positive-test rate reaches 15%.
Across Allegheny County more than 18% percent of Covid tests have been positive in recent days.
Whelp, at least we’re not Missouri, where the 7-day positive-test rate is currently 23.7%.