CMS ‘poised’ to keep reopening plan despite wider COVID-19 spread in Charlotte
One month after a small number of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools students returned for in-person instruction, district officials said Monday that there have been no known widespread coronavirus outbreaks in classrooms.
Most of CMS remains in remote-only learning as public health statistics show worsening spread of COVID-19 in Mecklenburg County.
The average number of new cases detected in Mecklenburg County has been trending up for the last month, according to an Observer analysis of publicly available COVID-19 data. Similarly, the percentage of positive tests administered to local residents has modestly increased in recent weeks.
The county hit a peak in cases and hospitalizations mid-summer and recorded reduced spread of the virus between August and early October. But the most recent data show trends are again moving in the wrong direction locally and statewide.
Chief school performance officer Kathy Elling said that the metrics CMS has outlined in its readiness dashboard — which include county trends on community spread, school level case counts and operational measures such as staffing and availability of personal protective equipment — is meant to serve as a framework to making decisions about bringing students and teachers back together.
“I want to emphasize that no one metric signifies any decision point for the district,” she said. “No one metric over 14 days triggers a decision.”
The district monitors two measures of community spread: the rate of new cases compared to population and the percent of COVID-19 positive tests. In one category, the county tipped from the moderate “yellow” scenario into the “red” scenario of substantial spread.
The county reported 120 new cases per 100,000 people over seven days, as observed cases in Charlotte and the surrounding towns have increased. Over the past few weeks, the county had seen a downward trajectory that hovered in the yellow zone, between 10 and 100 new cases per 100,000 people.
Test positivity rate, or the percent of all COVID-19 tests given in Mecklenburg County that come back positive, is also on the rise. The district earlier had entered the green zone of less than 5%, or minimal spread, but the rising rate brought CMS back into the yellow zone Monday and the previous week. Currently, the county’s rate has been roughly 6.5%, according to the school district’s dashboard.
Currently, there are roughly 2,700 pre-K students and students with disabilities who are in classrooms for in-person learning. In the past week, CMS reported eight students and 16 employees have tested positive.
No clusters, defined as five or more connected cases reported within 14 days of each other, have been reported by the district. No school has had to quarantine more than 25 people within the past two weeks, and 19 schools have had at least one positive case in the past 14 days.
Elling said that about 82% of schools scheduled to have students in-person next week are staffed with nurses, and that the district was working to close the gap this week. While school facilities are currently in the yellow zone in terms of whether they are set up for social distancing, Elling said she expected that percentage to shift to green, or more that 95% complete, by later this week.
“We believe we are poised to open for K-5,” Elling said. “The board will be getting an update on these metrics on Wednesday night.”
Students in grades K-5 are scheduled to return to classrooms in one week, unless the board votes to further delay the start date. The return of elementary school students will mark the largest phase-in of children in CMS so far, which has opted for a staggered approach to bringing children back for in-person learning.
This story was originally published October 26, 2020 at 5:24 PM.