What would it take for COVID-19 to close Lexington-Richland 5 school buildings?

School hasn’t even begun yet, but the COVID-19 spread in the S.C. Midlands is so bad Lexington-Richland 5 is already one step away from shuttering school buildings, Superintendent Akil Ross said Thursday.

Lexington-Richland 5 is at a level orange, a four out of five on its coronavirus mitigation scale. Once the district reaches a level red, classes will be online-only, according to the district’s operational guidance documents.

However, it’s unclear what would bump the district up to a red.

Asked during a Thursday town hall what it would take for the district to shutter school buildings, Ross said he wasn’t going to say publicly what would constitute a level red because “that information has been used to try to close schools,” Ross said Thursday.

Broadly speaking, Lexington-Richland 5 would close schools when “We cannot operate a school safely,” Ross said.

However, Ross encouraged those in the town hall to look to the district’s planning documents, which assigns color grades based on community transmission and the percent positive level reported by the district’s coronavirus dashboard. The lowest level is blue, in which guidelines call for no social distancing, masking, etc.

Level two, green, is triggered when there is low community transmission and a less than 5% positive rate in the district’s COVID-19 dashboard. Whether community transmission is determined to be low, medium or high is determined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Jane Kelly, an assistant state epidemiologist for the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, said during the Thursday town hall.

Level three, yellow, is triggered when community transmission is considered moderate and the district’s percent positive rate is between 5% and 9.99%. Level four, orange, is triggered when there is high community spread and a percent positive rate that exceeds 10%, according to district documents. The highest level, red, does not list specific criteria for what would trigger that level.

When school districts were forming their back-to-school plans in late spring and early summer, it looked as if COVID-19 was in full retreat. Now, thanks to the delta variant and unvaccinated people spreading the virus, public health officials are sounding the alarms about the rapidly increasing number of cases.

The Kershaw County School District reopened schools Aug. 5. As of Friday, the district reported that at least 135 students and 23 staff members had tested positive for the coronavirus. The district reported 676 students — 6% of the total student population — and six employees were in quarantine after coming in contact with someone who tested positive for the virus, according to the district.

Fifty-three of the students who tested positive for COVID were in elementary schools, which also had 312 students in quarantine.

This story was originally published August 13, 2021 at 11:20 AM.