With only one student quarantined last Friday from exposure to the novel coronavirus COVID-19 during the week of Sept. 21-25, the overall number of positive cases and quarantines are down in the district.

“Positive cases are down to five and quarantines are down to three staff members,” says Assistant Superintendent Dr. Jeri Kay Hardy. “The ones previously in quarantine had 13 coming back Sept. 21and the 30 students and staff who were quarantined previously (Sept. 17) come back this Wednesday.”

Hardy gave the district’s official update on Monday afternoon. The numbers she provided are down from Superintendent Dr. Chuck Garner’s Sept. 21 report to the Gasconade County R-2 Board of Education.

“To date for 36 days, we have had seven positive cases for students and staff combined,” Garner told board members at the Sept. 21 board meeting. “Five staff have been quarantined and 80 students have been quarantined.”

Hardy said they know the student from the Sept. 25 letter is not positive for the case because the parent contacted the school to say there was no exposure, but they were asked to quarantine. She said the district is getting a handle on operating during the pandemic.

“We have the hang of the contact tracing and know that less than six feet apart for more than 15 minutes will require us to quarantine,” Hardy said. “We have contact tracing and procedures in place, and seating charts so we can make sure we contact tracing the correct individuals.”

Hardy said they use more than just a seating chart to determine if students who may have come into contact with a positive case need to quarantine. They also visit the rooms and measure the spaces between students’ desks.

“If they are questionable, we go and check with the teachers to make sure no group work was assigned,” Hardy said. “A lot of our exposures are still coming from outside sources. The student quarantines that we had received, we quarantined all of those kids and no positives resulted from that.”

The district continues to do well, and they do not have an overabundance of positive cases. Hardy says that can be attributed to the good practices they have in place.

“A lot of kids will not test positive as far as when you look at the data, and some students testing positive are being harassed,” Hardy said, citing a story from the publication Newsweek reporting on four Missouri schools that have allowed students to return to school without the mandated quarantine. “If you have a lot of students being quarantined, they may get upset they are being quarantined.”

She said the article mentioned quarantines can be dangerous to the mental health of some students at well as set their education back. While she wouldn’t be surprised if more Missouri schools adopt some of these tactics, the Gasconade R-2 School District has no such plans.

“We will continue with practices we have in place at this time,” Hardy said about the district’s plans moving forward. “We had a good week last week and are hoping for a better week this week.”

“We are going to continue to do some things,” Garner told the board during the Sept. 21, meeting. “We have had positive cases where we have more students and folks quarantined, other cases we haven’t. We know that physical distancing is the key to keep everybody safe and to keep our doors open. That is what we continue to work on perfecting.”

As of Monday afternoon, the district had no new quarantines or positive cases.

On Tuesday afternoon, however, Garner issued a text message to R-2 families informing them two Owensville Elementary   School students and one from the middle school had been asked to go into quarantine due to an exposure outside of the school environment.

Staff and students who had direct contact with these three students have been notified by either by district or health department officials but and no further action was necessary at this time, Garner’s message noted.

He concluded the message adding these students have not shown any positive symptoms related to the virus.