SPRINGVILLE, N.Y. — The sixth grade class at Springville Middle School will be returning to school on Thursday after some students tested positive for COVID-19.
The district canceled classes Wednesday for the sixth grade after a third student tested positive for COVID.
The school notified parents immediately and made the decision to keep the entire grade home while they coordinated with the Erie County Health Department.
Superintendent Kimberly Moritz tells 2 On Your Side the district checked the schedules of the three positive students and determined they were only in close contact 20-25 students. Those students are now in quarantine.
Moritz says all of this started unfolding late in the day Tuesday.
"The protocol from the Erie County Department of Health, which I believe is a standard higher than the standard held by New York State, is that when you have two students in a classroom, on a bus, or on a team who are COVID positive, it quarantines the rest of the class," Moritz said.
"The fact that we had a third case reported by a family that was not yet verified by the Erie County Department of Health, and we saw the potential from their quarantining rules which we've heard all along that it could impact the entire sixth grade class, students do change between classes, we sent out the message later in the evening that all sixth grade students would be quarantining."
There are 126 students in the 6th grade class in the district.
The superintendent says these are not the first positive cases so far this school year.
"We've had twenty positive individuals in our district, which is a much greater rate than what we saw last year. And of course because we are in full in-person five days a week, which is absolutely our goal, I almost feel like this is the cost we have to pay because of being fully in-person it means this high standard of who gets quarantined," Moritz said.
"Certainly, our number one goal is to keep everyone safe to avoid the spread of COVID within our school, but then very much to keep all of our students in school, fully in-person five days a week."
2 On Your Side asked the superintendent if she thinks it will get better if and when the vaccine is approved for younger kids.
"If the vaccine were available for all of our students, I would love to say, love to say that that's going to help. We're not a district in which I'm seeing a high rate of vaccination among students, and I definitely have seen that all of our families have very strong opinions it seems one way or the other, and I mean we're what, 18, 19 months into this, and I don't really see anyone being swayed on their thinking about the vaccine and how they feel about that for their students," Moritz said.