COVID spike forces city schools to close early for Christmas

Required close contact quarantines as cases of COVID-19 have spiked among students and staff has led to an early Christmas dismissal for Demopolis City Schools.

In announcing the decision that students will not report to school next week, Supt. Kyle Kallhoff said the school system had been coping well during the pandemic until after the Thanksgiving holiday.

He said two questions have been uppermost in his mind since the start of school: Is there enough staff to cover/teach classes, and is leaving schools open contributing to a spread of COVID-19?

“Until returning from Thanksgiving break, we have been able to operate comfortably considering these two questions,” Kallhoff said. “However, the spread of COVID in our area since returning from Thanksgiving is to the point where we need to pause all student operations until Jan.4, 2021.”

Next week, students will not report to school and will begin their Christmas break 3 1/2 days early. Employees will still report to school next week.

Specific details on finishing the semester, closing out grades and semester exams will come from each school.

Kallhoff said the school system will file for an exemption from the State Department of Education in relation to making up the missed days. If the exemption is not granted, then the days will be made up prior to the end of the school year or added to the end of the school year. 

“In most situations, our positive cases are stemming from events that have taken place outside of school,” Kallhoff continued. Following the CDC guidelines and protocols will help minimize the number of students that must be sent home for 14 days who may not have COVID-19 but have been identified as a close contact to a person who has tested positive.

“It is imperative that we take precautions over the Christmas break,” he said. “If our positive COVID numbers continue to trend upward, we will be forced to move to remote learning, which is not what we want for the students we serve or our employees.”

In a chart he shared, Kallhoff tallied the positive and suspected cases among students at each school: DHS, 8 positive, 1 suspected, and 72 close contact quarantines; DMS, 4 positive, 5 potential and 115 quarantines; USJ, 1 positive, 4 suspected and 15 quarantines; WES, no positive cases, 5 suspected and 28 quarantines.

Among staff members, DHS, DMS and USJ each has had one positive case, and WES, 3. There are no reported potential cases. That lead to 5 quarantines at DHS, 2 at DMS, none at USJ and 6 at WES.