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A Draper charter school has become the first in Utah to close due to a COVID-19 outbreak.
American Preparatory Academy’s Draper 1 campus shut down Tuesday and learning will now shift online, confirmed Carolyn Sharette, the charter’s executive director. The move comes after 15 students and staff there tested positive for the virus less than two weeks after it had reopened.
“We’re just pivoting,” Sharette said. “I assume this will happen at all schools eventually.”
Schools began reopening across the state beginning early last month after encouragement from the governor to welcome students back.
Sharette said the students and teachers with the virus are now isolating. Anyone who was in close contact with them — defined as within 6 feet of an individual with the coronavirus for more than 15 minutes — has been asked to quarantine.
“We’re following the recommendations from the health department,” she added.
As of now, she said, the charter hopes to be able to have students return again on Sept. 11. They will be doing their classes remotely until that is determined.
Sharette said that will impact about 65% of the roughly 600 students at the Draper campus who had elected to return in person this fall. The school, located at 12892 S. Pony Express Road, is one of seven American Preparatory sites in Utah. The one impacted covers grades 1-6. Others that include junior high and high school students are not closing.
In its reopening plan submitted to the state — which all schools were required to create — APA directors maintained that opening in person was critical for learning.
They wrote: “Students need to be in school if it is at all possible. Issues of student academic loss, student mental health deterioration, and lack of supervision for students as parents return to work are real and significant factors which support the need for students to be in school.”
The plan also says, in part, that “students in the age-band of K-12 schools are not considered by the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] to be high-risk individuals for COVID-19.” Most studies have found that younger kids face serious complications from the virus less often than adults, but they can still carry it and pass it on to older adults.
And educators are considered high-risk for getting sick from the coronavirus because of their age or existing health conditions.
Alpine School District — the largest in the state — has declined to say how many infections prompted the change there. But the district, overall, has confirmed 67 active cases over its 91 schools; of those, 41 are students and 26 are faculty. The hope with the shift to hybrid teaching is to reduce the number of students in the school at one time and slow the spread of the virus.
From the beginning of the pandemic, there have been 121 patients infected in 25 school outbreaks, with an average age of 18. Seven of those patients have been hospitalized. None has died.
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September 02, 2020 at 01:28AM
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Draper charter school becomes first in Utah to close because of COVID-19 outbreak - Salt Lake Tribune
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