The state of Ohio put out a very detailed document in early July for the over 600 school districts to adhere to when making their decisions as to whether they go to virtual school, hybrid or in person schooling this fall.
The school district in my town of 9 to 10,000 people chose to go in person 5 days a week. Virtual schooling is an option for those that choose. Teachers would be teaching both in person and virtual at the same time. Many protocols were put into place as far as seating arrangements, how many people in the hallways at a time etc. All to eliminate the gathering of students. All students are to wear a mask and all students are to clean their desk before sitting down and when the get up to leave the room.
School started on Aug 25th. On Aug 26th, a high school student informed the school that they were tested randomly by their employer. Their results were positive. 22 additional students were put into quarantine at that time (day 2) and school went on as normal for everyone else. On day 3 or 4 (not sure of the timing on this), another 3 students had positive test results. 2 in the high school and 1 in the middle school (grade 6-8). An additional 150 students are now in quarantine.
I asked my neighbor last night who teaches in a neighboring district why the quarantine and not shutting down the school and having everyone do virtual. He thinks it is because of the assigned seating. They can determine who came in closest contact to the students. His school has not started yet but that is what he has been told would happen with them (unless there are too many cases). He also has talked with contacts in our district (he had 3 kids go through the school so knows a lot of people besides living here) and some of them think NO additional students should be quarantined but only the positive cases
He teaches 7th grade and did say that 25% of his students have chosen to go virtual. He has been working all week getting everything set up in his classroom. Oh yeah, word is out that some of the kids that are positive went to a soccer game when they were supposed to be quarantining.
I also found out this week that a cousin and his wife had tested positive in late July. Neither of them had any symptoms but they both quarantined at home and checked in with the county health department twice a day. They were released as "recovered" after 10 days. Found out from another neighbor who is a friend of theirs that 2 of the 3 couples that go out to eat together had gone out to eat (neighbor and his wife chose not to go that night). The other guy got sick the next day with the symptoms and got tested... he was positive. His wife also tested positive. So several days later is when my cousin and his wife got tested and had the positive results. The other guy's wife had minor symptoms. None of them were hospitalized though and all are recovered. They don't know if the other guy got it at work or if all of them got it at the restaurant. My cousin has a job where he delivers product to multiple places during the day. I said it was quite possible he was the one that got it and passed it to the others. They don't think they will ever really know.
My county is now up to 475 cases which is over 1% of our county population. It took from March 27th to June 29th to reach 101 cases. That number doubled in July to 228. The end of August was 458 (again doubling the number of cases). And with the attitude of many around here, I don't see it getting any better in the month of September. Because of our increase in cases we are on the top 10 "hot spot" list for the state again. The county ranking list (cases per 100K) first started on Aug 8th. We were 16th that week, moved to 11th on Aug 11th. Moved into the top 10 on Aug 18th and still there. The hottest areas in the state are in the rural counties and especially the western half of the state (which is where I am).
