CREC school closes early due to virus case

System plans to reopen Tuesday

By Rebecca Lurye

HARTFORD— ACREChigh school in Hartford sent students home early Friday after a student tested positive for the coronavirus, the regional school system announced.

A Capitol Region Education Council spokesman initially said the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts High School FullDay program was canceling in-person classes until further notice. Later Friday afternoon, the school system said the weekend would provide enough time to conduct contact tracing for the program, which is located at the Colt Armory.

“We sent students from Arts

High School home early today so we could have time to contact trace, but many of them will be brought back to school on Tuesday once health officials tell us who has to stay home,” CREC Superintendent Tim Sullivan said in a letter to families.

There had been at least 19 confirmed positive cases in the school system, three of them in the past week.

Another 257 people, including 70 staff members, have been asked to quarantine while CREC conducted contact tracing, according to the school system, which releases the information weekly. That’s up from 226 last week.

However, just a few schools account for most of those quarantines and many of them were brief, as contact tracing determined they did not have close contact with the positive cases.

For example, after a student at Civic Leadership High School in Enfield tested positive last week, CREC asked 22 staff and 76 students to stay home. Contact tracing was conducted and nearly all of those staff and students returned to school a day later, a CREC spokesman said.

Asimilar situation played out during the first week of school, one student was confirmed positive at the Metropolitan Learning Center, a magnet school in Bloomfield, prompting four staff members and 51 students to briefly self-quarantine.

“While we would prefer to have zero cases, these numbers are relatively low and indicative of the great work being done every day by staff and students,” Sullivan said.

COURANTFILE PHOTO The East Armory is the signature structure that houses a CREC magnet high school program on the second floor. One CREC high school in Hartford closed early Friday after a COVID-19 case was discovered.