‘Refining our plan’: Area schools remain open as 2 test positive for coronavirus
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools will remain open, Superintendent Earnest Winston said, after public health officials announced Thursday that two people in Mecklenburg County tested presumptive positive for COVID-19.
The county and the state currently do not recommend school closures in response to the coronavirus, Mecklenburg County health director Gibbie Harris said.
Winston said that CMS has spent the past three weeks developing the district’s response plan to the coronavirus. He said that district staff planned to meet this afternoon to examine the protocols currently in place.
“We’re refining our plan day by day,” Winston said. “We know this is a rapidly changing situation.”
Winston encouraged families to take precautionary steps — keeping children at home if they are ill and washing hands frequently. He said the district would follow recommendations from the county and the health department when it comes to deciding whether or not schools should close, but emphasized that the district was not at the point of mass closures yet.
“We certainly have not approached that point,” he said. “I think Ms. Harris was very clear today. There’s no recommendation that schools close, but we continue to work through our plan.”
CMS has taken a number of precautionary measures to stem the spread of the coronavirus. On Tuesday, the district said it would limit all travel for students and staff, including all CMS-sponsored field trips for students and professional development for employees. Competitions for athletics, band and chorus are exempted for now, but the district said it would continue to evaluate those policies.
Other public school districts in the Charlotte area have taken similar measures, limiting out-of-district travel for their students and employees.
In Charlotte, charter and private schools are also taking steps to address the COVID-19 pandemic. KIPP Charlotte, a charter school, said that it planned to follow CMS’s lead on closures, and that like CMS, it had already canceled field trips.
Anokhi Saraiya, KIPP Charlotte’s head of schools, said that the school was exploring options for remote learning should a full closure be necessary. Saraiya said that includes looking at digital learning as well as low-tech options like work packets in case families do not have internet access at home.
A significant portion of KIPP Charlotte’s students are eligible for free or reduced price meals, and Saraiya said food security for students was one of her biggest concerns about a possible closure. KIPP students are bused to the school from all over the county, she said, and even if the school continued to serve meals, students would have transportation challenges.
“It’s what concerns us most about being closed,” she said, “but we have a lot of faith in our Charlotte community.”
In a Wednesday letter to parents at Charlotte Latin School, a private school in south Charlotte, head of school Chuck Baldecchi said that the school was working to minimize disruption for students. Parents were asked to fill out a survey about their spring break travel plans, and students were urged to bring their laptops and other instructional materials home over the break.
“Our aim is to stay open and to maintain as much of school-as-usual as possible; however, we will follow the directives for schools from local, state, and national authorities,” Baldecchi wrote. “If at any time we are told to suspend school by the authorities, we must do so.”
On Thursday, Charlotte Latin informed parents it would start spring break early and take Friday off, “out of an abundance of caution,” Baldecchi wrote. Providence Day School and Charlotte Country Day School, two other private schools in the area, also announced closures for Friday.
Providence Day will move to remote instruction after spring break ends. The change will continue indefinitely, head of school Glyn Cowlishaw wrote in a letter to parents.
This story was originally published March 12, 2020 at 12:36 PM.