Classes suspended at York Castle as student tests positive
FACE-TO-FACE CLASSES have been suspended at the York Castle High School in Brown’s Town, St Ann, as a precautionary measure after a student who attended class for one day on February 2 was confirmed positive with the COVID-19 virus on Friday.
Principal Raymon Treasure told The Gleaner last night that classes have been suspended indefinitely and all students will revert to online classes.
The principal said that the health ministry informed him of the status of the student, who was asymptomatic, yesterday afternoon, and the decision to suspend faceto-face classes was taken immediately.
“We have to deep-clean the place and then I would have to spend the time reassuring teachers and parents that all is well. It will take time,” he added.
He explained: “It’s not a [cluster]. It’s a student who would have contracted [the virus] and basically turned up, and once I get a call saying that there is a student, I’m not going to be irresponsible and continue. The student would have been out from February 2, he came for one day and that’s it, so in essence he would have been on the property for just a day.”
Treasure pointed out that there has been no complaint from other students. He said based on the current situation in St Ann where COVID-19 cases have been on the rise, an incident like this was always expected to happen and the administration was prepared for it.
“It’s impossible that you’re going to have the virus spreading in St Ann and you don’t have even one student who would have contracted the virus. In the back of our minds, we were preparing for something like this to happen,” he said.
Of a total student population of 1396, only 650 from grades 10 to 13 were recently selected to resume face-to-face classes at York Castle, as the Ministry of Education pushed to resume teaching in the classroom.
However, with lots of parents and student still being scared of the coronavirus, the majority of those selected decided to stick to online learning, with the total number of students attending classes on any given day being 310.