The Cobb County School District is facing pressure to halt in-person learning for students after one teacher died from COVID-19 and at least four other educators had to be hospitalized with the illness.
A petition has been created asking the district to revert back to remote-only learning for its 107,000 students. Cobb’s spring semester starts Wednesday, and will offer both face-to-face and virtual learning for students.
As of Monday, the petition has received more than 3,600 signatures, with a goal of reaching 5,000 supporters. It was created about a week after Hendricks Elementary School teacher Patrick Key died on Christmas Day following a month-long battle with COVID-19.
“Unlike young students who may be more likely to go physically unaffected, even if they’re infected..., our teachers, conversely, may be at high risk of serious illness while interacting with non-symptomatic, though infected, students,” the petition states.
The Cobb County School District said its mission to educate students has not changed during the pandemic, but it has adapted the way it serves its students and “the way we support each other.”
“We will continue to take every possible step to keep our hallways safe, our classrooms healthy, and our schools open both remotely and face-to-face,” district spokeswoman Nan Kiel said Monday in response to questions about the petition.
In August while the district was operating remote-only classes, Superintendent Chris Ragsdale said he wanted to see cases per 100,000 people to drop to around 200 before he would consider providing a face-to-face option for students. However, at the Nov. 19 work session, Ragsdale told Board of Education members that the district doesn’t have any metrics it uses to determine whether to keep classrooms open and said it regularly consults with the Cobb & Douglas Public Health Department on case-by-case basis.
As of Monday, the two-week case rate per 100,000 people in Cobb is 723, compared to 605 on Dec. 21 and 364 on Dec. 7. Cobb & Douglas Public Health officials have said anything more than 100 cases per 100,000 people is considered high community spread.
Three educators and one school district social worker have been diagnosed with COVID-19. Jacob Furse, a Garrett Middle School chorus and drama teacher, and Julia Varendoe, who teaches gifted students at Mount Bethel Elementary School, are both recovering at home.
Kemp Elementary School teacher Dana Johnson is still hospitalized and on a ventilator at WellStar Paulding Hospital. Cobb schools social worker Petrina Fowler, who was also hospitalized with COVID-19 and pneumonia, was allowed to go home last week, according to a GoFundMe page created to help her family with medical expenses.
In an email sent Christmas Day acknowledging Key’s death, Ragsdale said he was encouraged by the “commitment our entire staff has made to our students, and I remain confident that we will beat COVID-19 as a team and as a county.”
“We need each of you as a member of our one team to keep us aligned with those priorities,” he said.
Other issues pointed out in the petition include the low availability of intensive care unit beds in hospitals; a newly identified and more contagious strain of COVID-19; and many schools’ inability to open their windows to improve air circulation.
Some school districts will delay the start of their spring semesters. Pickens County, which said it has 50 staff members in quarantine or isolation, said it will start the semester on Monday, Jan. 11. All students will begin the semester with virtual learning due to the rise in COVID-19 cases in the county.
Long and Ware county schools are also delaying the start of their spring semesters. All Hall County students will learn remotely for the first week of the semester, which begins Tuesday.
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