A week in, COVID infections force St. Teresa’s Academy to do half its classes online
A week after starting back to school with all classes in person, St. Teresa’s Academy shifted to teaching half the high school’s students online after some students tested positive for COVID-19.
“It is not that we had a major outbreak,” said Siabhan May-Washington, president of the all girls Kansas City Catholic high school.
About eight students have tested positive for the new coronavirus, but all of them contracted the virus outside of school. The school does not plan to go back to in-person classes until Sept. 8, but that could change depending on the level of infection among St. Teresa’s students at that time.
May-Washington said the school made the switch on Thursday after getting guidance from health experts and to adhere to the reopening plan school officials designed prior to the start of classes. The plan calls for school officials to make decisions about whether classes are taught in person or online based on the number of cases among students, teachers and staff.
With no active cases, which is where the school was on Aug. 19 when classes started, the plan permits all classes to be in person. Even with one to seven cases in-person classes are allowed.
At a third level — eight to 14 cases — the plan calls for the school to go to a hybrid learning model where freshmen and sophomores are in classrooms on Mondays and Thursdays while seniors and juniors take classes online. The groups switch situations on Tuesdays and Fridays. Wednesdays are reserved for students who need to be on the campus for other activities.
With more than 14 cases, St. Teresa’s would make all is classes online only.
The hybrid is designed to “reduce student population on the campus at any one time,” May-Washington said. It allows for greater social distancing, she said.
St. Teresa’s students and faculty are required to wear a mask at all times. Frequent hand washing is required and hand sanitizing stations were installed throughout campus inside and outside. Every student has a health monitoring app and is required to record their temperature and any virus symptoms before they come on campus.
May-Washington said social distancing stickers are on the floors and outside on pathways between buildings. Every student was also given a face shield to wear with their mask if they choose and teachers stand behind floor to ceiling clear shields, “as an extra safety precaution,” May-Washington said.
While some parents of public school children across the Kansas City metro have called on districts to bring students back into classrooms full time, many districts delayed the start of the school year until Sept. 8 and decided to open with most students learning online.
Leaders of some private schools in the area have said that because they typically are smaller than public schools they feel confident that with enough safety precautions in place they could open their doors.
Rockhurst High School, a private Jesuit school for boys only, was one of the first to open in August.
Pembroke Hill School, a private college-prep school, held its first day of in-person class last week. The school reduced the size of each class to allow for social distancing.
This story was originally published August 31, 2020 at 6:01 PM.
