4 employees of an SC school district died last weekend, but officials mum on causes
Exactly one week after classes began, school district officials in the South Carolina Lowcountry said four of its employees had died in recent days but refused to say if the deaths were related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Dorchester School District 2 in Summerville, a bedroom community about 25 miles away from Charleston, confirmed the deaths in a brief statement Monday afternoon.
The district did not identify the employees. It also did not say where the employees worked and if they had been at their respective schools in-person during the first week of school, which began Aug. 16.
“The thoughts and prayers of the entire district are with these families,” the written statement from Dorchester District 2 said. “The school district is focused on providing support for the families of these employees as well as members of their school and department families during this difficult time.”
However, social media posts published Sunday afternoon by SC for Ed, a statewide teacher advocacy group, claimed three of the school district employees died from COVID-19.
Three of the posts identified the employees by name, and two featured smiling photos of them.
When pressed about the cause of death of the four employees on Monday, school district spokeswoman Pat Raynor said the district is “not commenting on this private matter.”
However, The Post and Courier reported that the district said it was informed that three of the deaths were related to COVID-19.
The deaths come just seven days after the district’s more than 25,000 students returned to the classroom after the pandemic disrupted the last school year.
By Sunday evening, it appeared that COVID-19 was continuing to impact what many parents, teachers and students had hoped would be the long-awaited return to a normal school year.
By the numbers
The public K-12 school district reported Sunday that 42 of its staff members had tested positive for COVID-19, along with 324 of its students. As of Sunday night, the district also had 771 active quarantines among students and 29 quarantines among staff members.
The district joined a majority of South Carolina schools that opened its doors without a mask mandate.
However, in recent weeks, some schools have taken matters into their own hands.
Charleston County schools last week announced that students, employees and visitors must wear a mask or face covering in its schools until at least Oct. 15. The move put the state’s second-largest school district at odds with a temporary law in the state budget that says no state funds can be used by schools to mandate masks or to enforce a mask mandate.
When Dorchester District 2’s board of trustees met Monday evening, school board chair Gail Hughes affirmed that the school district would stand by its decision to encourage, but not require, face masks.
Hughes said board members took an oath to uphold state law when they were duly elected. She also said the board had sought legal counsel and was advised to encourage, but not mandate, masks.
“No one knows if the mask is the way to go or if the mask is not the way to go. This virus is something that has just totally confused every one of us — and none of us up here are doctors,” Hughes said, adding that the science keeps changing.
She wore a black face mask as she spoke.
“We don’t know what to do. We don’t know what is the right thing to. So all we can do is what we’re mandated to do because we think our moral values are very important. I don’t think that we would be teaching our children the right thing to do if we go against the laws in the state of South Carolina. And we believe that morally we are correct in saying that we have to stay the course that we are on right now,” Hughes said.
But before Hughes launched into her remarks on masks, she asked for a moment of silence to remember the four employees who had died over the weekend.
For 20 seconds, the room fell silent.
“Each and every one of our employees are very, very important to us and losing the few that we lost was devastating to every one of us,” Hughes said.
What was shared
According to the social media posts from SC for Ed about those who had died, the COVID-19 virus allegedly claimed the lives of three women: an elementary school teacher, a high school cheerleading coach and an elementary school cafeteria manager.
The fourth person was never identified by the advocacy group.
Nicole Walker, an SC for Ed board member, told The State that the group decided to publish the three social media posts after people reached out to the group and asked them to share a memorial to their late colleagues.
But by Monday evening, Walker said the group was reconsidering.
She said the group discussed the matter and had decided it would soon delete the tributes after learning one of the posts had upset a family member.
“It was only meant to honor them. That is completely our fault, and we will no longer do those kinds of posts at all,” the statement from SC for Ed said.
But at least one of the deaths was confirmed to be from COVID-19.
A life lost to COVID
The widower of one of the victims publicly documented the shock and sadness of losing his wife to COVID-19.
He described his pain in a 15-word Facebook status update Sunday morning.
“I’m really not sure what to say right now. My dear sweet Clair is gone,” Scott Baisley wrote.
Clairisa Davis Baisley was an elementary school teacher who taught at Knightsville Elementary for seven years. She married Scott Baisley on Feb. 20, 2020, just two weeks before South Carolina saw its first confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus.
This year, she was going to be a mom. She had also just accepted a job at Spann Elementary as an assistant principal.
As her husband, Scott Baisley, posted status updates for weeks about how his wife was doing, her future colleagues wrote that they were rooting for her and praying for her.
She recently gave birth to a baby boy, but Baisley told WSCS that she never got to hold him.
In a second tribute he posted to his late wife on Sunday evening, Scott Baisley wrote she was “a ray of sunshine in an otherwise dark world.”
He promised her, “I will always and forever love you more.”
This story was originally published August 24, 2021 at 9:15 AM.
