Triggered COVID-19 precaution sends Lexington County school to online-only classes
Students at an elementary school in West Columbia will not be allowed to return to the building for the rest of 2020 after a COVID-19 safety precaution was triggered, the Lexington 2 school district said Tuesday.
Wood Elementary School students will temporarily be in online-only classrooms because the school district’s coronavirus safety protocol was put in effect, spokeswoman Dawn Kujawa said in a news release.
More than 10% of the students at the school either have tested positive for COVID-19 or are in quarantine for having close contact with a positive case, according to the release.
Because that happened, all students are moved to remote learning for 10 days, Kujawa said.
The 10-day period for Wood Elementary students will begin on Wednesday, according to the release. With a half-day before winter break falling on Dec. 18, Wood students will not return to in-person, face-to-face classes until Jan. 4 at the earliest.
Information on the number of students who have been confirmed to have the coronavirus or are in quarantine was not made available by the school district.
Lexington 2 said its COVID-19 tracking shows that more than 90% of those in the district placed on quarantine do not turn into positive cases of the coronavirus.
Wood Elementary is near the intersection of Fish Hatchery Road and Pine Ridge Drive.
On Saturday, a teacher at a Lexington 1 elementary school died of COVID-19. Staci A. Blakely, a third-grade teacher at Carolina Springs Elementary School, died from complications caused by the coronavirus, Lexington 1 school district officials said.
Also over the weekend, the Orangeburg County School District said it was going to online-only classes because of a rise in COVID-19 cases among teachers and staff.
After a high number of teachers called in sick last week, the Lexington-Richland 5 school district voted to move middle and high school students to a two-day-per-week “hybrid” schedule.
In the Lexington 2, more than 20 teachers were out multiple days last week, in what appeared to be a protest against the district’s coronavirus policies. A “higher than normal” number of teachers were out at Airport High School and Brookland-Cayce High School, and both schools continued to operate with replacement staff, the district said.
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This story was originally published December 8, 2020 at 3:31 PM.
