Since the start of the school year, 375 students and 37 teachers have tested positive for COVID-19 at Daviess County Public Schools. On any given day, a combination of approximately 500 students and staff are quarantined district-wide at DCPS. There have been 24 positive cases at Owensboro Catholic Schools, which is averaging about 40 quarantines per day. Owensboro Public Schools declined to provide specific numbers regarding cases and quarantines.
Officials with each school system said they have not had to shut down any entire buildings — though one classroom was closed — due to the mitigation strategies in place, primarily pointing to universal masking as a major factor.
DCPS and OPS are also looking to further enhance their ability to keep students in the classroom by investigating how to implement a “test-to-stay” program. The test-to-stay model gives students who are exposed to COVID-19 at school the opportunity to test for the virus over the course of a pre-determined timeframe to decide if they can remain in the classroom or be required to quarantine.
DCPS superintendent Matt Robbins said during a Board of Education luncheon Tuesday that their district hopes to make a decision within 48 hours on choosing a company to work with to implement the test-to-stay program.
“We’ve gotten far enough into it that we know we’re going to do it, it’s (just about choosing) which company and how that’s going to take place,” Robbins said. “We know that they will have to employ some people, so there’s front-end work that has to be done. We want to be able to get them started so that we can begin utilizing it.”
OPS Public Information Officer Jared Revlett said Tuesday afternoon they are in a similar process of figuring out how to implement the program.
“We are working on finalizing our plan to send to KDE and ‘test-to-stay’ will be a part of that,” Revlett said. “We are in the process of exploring options for a provider, but ultimately, we want to have this option as another layer of keeping students in school and not at home on quarantine.”
OCS officials did not respond by the time of publication regarding whether they planned to implement test-to-stay.
In breaking down their COVID-19 cases and quarantines, Robbins said approximately 462 students (about 4.2% of the total student population) are in quarantine on any given day, along with 37 staff (2.1%).
Robbins said it was a “conservative” estimate that more than 3,500 (or 32%) of all of DCPS students would have experienced quarantine by now if they were in a non-masking environment.
He also noted that over the last few consecutive days, DCPS has averaged just one new staff person testing positive per day for COVID-19.
Robbins said vaccinations among staff and universal masking was a major role in not having to shut down school.
“We chose to (implement our own mask requirement prior to the start of the year) because we thought that was what was best for our students and staff,” he said. “We stayed in session with over 95% of our kids receiving daily instruction. However, we did watch as others were not so fortunate. Closures and/or enormous quarantines quickly resulted in the change of school district policies right after they opened school because they quickly saw what we were able to see ahead (of time).”
OCS Chief Academic Officer Keith Osborne said as of Sept. 9, a total of 21 students and three staff members had tested positive for coronavirus.
“We really can’t directly trace a transmission to school, but we have had multiple cases in a classroom and on a sports team and either quarantine or screen for symptoms from potential close contacts,” Osborne said last week. “We know that there is a risk of possible in school transmissions, but we can’t positively verify any.”
Osborne said they briefly closed a grade school classroom when multiple children presented with symptoms, but there were no additional transmissions from that class.
While he did not respond Tuesday regarding test-to-stay, Osborne said last week that OCS tries and mitigate transmissions by wearing masks indoors and distancing where possible.
“We also do multiple screenings per day of students who had potential contact with the virus,” he said. “We are doing everything we can to contribute to the safety of our community.”
Revlett said last week that OPS is choosing not to release specific numbers this year.
“The number of quarantines is extremely misleading and when a number is thrown out, the assumption is that all of the quarantines are school-related and that couldn’t be further from the truth,” he said. “The overwhelming majority of those who have had to be quarantined were a direct result of a contact outside the school building … but are only included in our number because they are absent from school.”
Revlett added that OPS appears “to be in better shape than many other districts across the state in that we haven’t reached a point where we need to consider closing down a school or the district as a whole to this point.”
