Beaufort County schools report record-high COVID infections; one school goes remote

Last week, Beaufort County School District logged more than 600 COVID infections and 2,200 quarantines among students and staff, leading to one school going fully remote this week.

The number of COVID infections — 500 among students and 114 among staff — is the highest single-week total the district has ever reported, according to spokesperson Candace Bruder.

It’s more than triple the number of cases reported between Jan. 3 and 7, when students returned from Christmas break.

Daufuskie Elementary School is remote until Monday, which principal Nikki Lucas told parents in a Jan. 14 email was “due to the increased number of presumptive positive and positive COVID-19 cases.”

“We realize this temporary shift to virtual learning is an inconvenience for families, but please know the safety and education of our students continues to be a top priority,” Lucas wrote.

“While students are learning remotely, the school will do extensive, additional cleaning, including fogging in order to allow staff members to teach remotely from their classrooms.”

Other schools locally have also decided to go virtual. Beaufort’s Bridges Preparatory Charter School and neighboring Jasper County School District are both remote until at least Monday.

Bruder said Wednesday that the district doesn’t currently expect other schools to move to remote learning, but added, “we continue to monitor each school multiple times a day.”

Last week, seven schools in the district — Hilton Head Island Elementary, Bluffton and H. E. McCracken Middle, River Ridge Academy and Beaufort, Bluffton and May River High — reported more than 30 student COVID infections each.

Quarantine numbers — last week, 58 staff and 2,160 students quarantined — are still lower than in September, in part due to new guidance from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.

During the fall semester, students and staff who were infected or exposed to COVID were expected to quarantine for 10 days; now, the quarantine period has been reduced to five days or eliminated entirely in some cases.

DHEC changed its policies over the weekend for unvaccinated teachers who are close contacts. Previously, unvaccinated teachers had to complete a five-day quarantine period and get a negative antigen or PCR test on or after the fourth day. To return to school, they had to wear masks for days six through 10 after exposure.

That policy is still in effect for unvaccinated students. But as of Sunday, unvaccinated teachers don’t have to quarantine after a COVID exposure if they don’t show symptoms while their school is in a “critical staffing shortage.” They will still have to wear a mask at school for 10 days after the exposure.

The policy is the among a slate of new guidelines that went into effect this month.

Quarantine policies for close contacts to someone with COVID depend on vaccination status. People who aren’t showing symptoms and have been fully vaccinated and/or who have tested positive for COVID in the past 90 days and are no longer contagious do not have to quarantine. But they must wear a mask for 10 days after exposure unless they’re eating or drinking while social distancing. DHEC recommends getting a COVID test on Day 5 after an exposure.

Now, if students or staff test positive for COVID-19, they’ll be required to quarantine for only five days instead of 10. After the five-day quarantine, they can return to school as long as they wear a mask indoors for the next five days and “provide a parent note confirming that symptoms have improved and there has been no fever in the past 24 hours without using fever-reducing medication,” per a district email.

If students or staff refuse to wear a mask indoors during days six through 10, they cannot return to campus. Students who are quarantining will get live online instruction from teachers who are also teaching in-person classes.

Also Tuesday night, the school boardtouched on the subject of a lawsuit filed against the district last month: teachers juggling in-person and remote instruction.

The plaintiff, Whale Branch Middle School teacher Amanda Patel, claims in the suit that she and her colleagues providing this type of instruction were underpaid with a one-time $1,000 bonus for the fall semester. She said they should have been paid at an hourly rate of $27.87 for the additional work, according to the district’s salary and stipend policies.

She’s asking for the teachers — the district employs more than 1,700 — who were eligible for the bonus to be paid three times the cost of their unpaid wages under the hourly rate.

Superintendent Frank Rodriguez and school board members didn’t publicly discuss the lawsuit Tuesday. However, Rodriguez asked the school board to consider changing the $1,000 spring semester bonuses to go only to teachers who provide in-person and remote instruction, instead of to every teacher in the district. The school board voted unanimously to postpone a decision on the bonuses “until the district has all of the information.”