All Park Hill students must move online to avoid COVID-19 spread after Thanksgiving
Because of a spike in COVID-19 cases and a staffing shortage, Park Hill school district is moving all classes online for the two weeks after Thanksgiving, Nov. 30 to Dec. 14.
Students in pre-K to 12th grade will attend classes online for what is the length of a quarantine recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “so hopefully it will prevent any spread of illness after the Thanksgiving holiday,” district officials said in a note to parents on Wednesday.
“We have seen our positive cases and our number of quarantines increasing over the last several weeks, just as the cases in our community are increasing as well,” the note said.
The district reported 61 new cases Nov. 11-17, the most since school opened Sept. 8. Those numbers have increased every week since Oct. 28 with most of the cases showing up in the pre-K and elementary schools.
Those students have been attending class in person full time; older students were going to classrooms part of the week and remained online the other days.
The district’s COVID dashboard this week shows 24 new cases among the youngest students, 18 at the middle schools and 16 at the high schools. And school officials are seeing the virus now spreading more often in school buildings.
Now 526 students and staff are in quarantine, making it difficult for the district to staff classrooms, school officials said.
District officials said if cases worsen, they might need to extend distance learning.
They asked parents and students to practice safety protocols over the Thanksgiving break. “We need our community’s help to get us back into school, so please do your part during this time to physically distance and wear your mask.”
Park Hill’s move to online puts it back to where all districts in the Kansas City region were in March when the pandemic began.
But now the case numbers are worse.
In an order taking effect Monday, Platte County limited gatherings to 10 people and mandated restaurants and bars operate at 50% capacity and close by 10 p.m. The order is similar to those in several other area jurisdictions.
On Tuesday the Lee’s Summit school board voted to have students in fourth grade and older move to online-only classes beginning Monday.
And in Kansas, every Johnson County district is moving older students back to online-only classes (one never brought them back to classrooms to begin with).
The Kansas City metropolitan area added more than 1,200 COVID-19 cases Wednesday.
The metro, including Kansas City and Jackson, Clay and Platte counties in Missouri, as well as Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas, gained 1,258 cases for a total of 70,057 cases.
