Olympia High closes campus after 6 virus cases
School to be closed through Sept. 18, with classes held virtually
Olympia High School is temporarily closing its campus and switching entirely to online learning after six COVID-19 cases were confirmed within the school, district officials said Sunday.
It is the first Orange County public school to shut down because of virus cases. Harmony Middle
School in Osceola County announced its two-week closure on Aug. 28 after 10 staff members either tested positive for the coronavirus or needed to be tested because they’d been in close contact with an infected employee.
Orange County Public Schools said in a statement on Sunday that Olympia will be closed from Sept. 8 through Sept. 18, and on-campus students will shift to the district’s virtual program LaunchEd@Home.
“This decision to pivot is out of an abundance of caution after several positive COVID-19 cases have been confirmed and connected through [Florida Department of Health] contact tracing,” the district said.
District figures show about 1,560 students were taking classes on campus and 2,570 were already learning remotely. On Friday, the school district said Olympia High was one of 16 schools that sent out quarantine letters but didn’t reveal until Sunday that 156 letters were issued related to the six positive virus cases and one pending case.
All Central Florida schools opened their campuses for in-person lessons last month. Since then, hundreds of teachers and students from across the region have been told they can’t come to school for two weeks because of possible exposure to the coronavirus.
During Olympia High’s closure, there will be no athletic events or extracurricular activities until Sept. 21. The campus will be disinfected before students return to classrooms.
Public school districts in Central Florida have varied on how they’re releasing information about coronavirus cases. In Or
ange, the region’s largest district with roughly 200,000 students, officials are not providing a campus-by-campus breakdown of the numbers or differentiating cases among students and staff.
It’s also unclear whether health department investigations found transmission inside the schools or if the students or teachers were exposed somewhere in the community.
The Florida Department of Education has said districts’ release of coronavirus case information is “completely voluntary.”
The reopening of schools during the pandemic forced parents to make a difficult decision between on-campus or remote learning and prompted teacher protests over districts’ ability to prevent the spread of the virus in classrooms.
The state’s requirement that Florida’s public schools open “brick and mortar” campuses five days a week beginning last month has been the subject of multiple lawsuits.
An appeals court ruled last week that Florida’s school reopening order did not force students back to campus, nor teachers back
into classrooms, and should remain in effect while the lawsuits challenging its constitutionality move through the court system.
John Puchein, who has taught at Olympia for 20 years and chose to teach in a classroom this semester, said most teachers thought a shutdown at some point this school year was inevitable.
But he said Sunday’s announcement still left some teachers scared they might get sick and others stressed because they’d left their laptops and needed curriculum materials in their classrooms when they finished work on Friday.
Puchein said he hasn’t been notified that he’s been exposed to anyone who
tested positive for the virus, but said he and his colleagues on campus feel almost resigned to getting sick at some point.
“I just love seeing the kids. It’s still scary,” he said. “It’s just a matter of time before we get it.”