City Hall closes doors to public due to covid

Pea Ridge City Hall was closed to the public Tuesday, Dec. 15, due to a positive result of a covid-19 test of an employee.

Some city employees are working as they were not in close proximity to the employee who tested positive, according to Nathan See, Street Department superintendent. They will respond to emails and phone calls.

City residents needing to conduct business with city officials may contact the city by going to the city’s web site (cityof pearidge.com) and then clicking on the specific department, See said.

City officials are still discussing whether to host the scheduled City Council meeting which was moved to Dec. 29 as the last meeting of the year.

At school, the numbers are constantly fluctuating, according to Kevin Ramey, who said that an additional positive case was added today, an additional classroom was quarantined, but four cases dropped off the books and 56 persons in quarantine were released from quarantine.

The numbers announced at the Monday night School Board meeting of 16 positive cases and 167 quarantined changed to 17 positive cases and 131 quarantined Tuesday morning. The numbers included virtual as well as face to face students and staff.

“It’s a very fluid situation,” he said.

“We’re doing everything we can to keep everybody safe, using multiple data points, taking a broad view,” Ramey said, explaining that the most difficult piece of the puzzle is that the guidelines keep fluctuating. He explained that school officials are answering to the Arkansas Department of Health and the Arkansas Department of Education and when the Health Department changes guidelines, they become effective immediately.

“We are trying to continually

educate our school community and our public and maintain the trust of our school system,” Ramey said, recognizing that when what he says changes, through no fault of his own, it damages trust.

“As guidelines fluctuate, we try to inform everybody,” he said.

At the School Board meeting Monday, Ramey commended Dana Tabor who has produced a spread sheet detailing the specifics of contact tracing. “We haven’t seen a whole lot of spread within classrooms,” Ramey said, although there were several “boyfriend/ girlfriend” cases, he said. “We’ve seen very little within classrooms and activities on campus.

School officials said the highest numbers were experienced after Thanksgiving break with 241 persons quarantined and 19 active cases.

“It had been running really low, less than 100,” superintendent Keith Martin said recently. He said he anticipates another rise after students return to school after Christmas break.