Some students told to stay home
Due to a positive case of COVID-19, second-grade cohort must quarantine for two weeks
STAMFORD — Secondgrade students at Toquam Magnet Elementary School scheduled to attend classes Tuesday were told to stay home, due to a positive case of COVID-19 found among the cohort.
Those students, who make up about half of all second graders attending class at Toquam this semester, have been ordered to quarantine for two weeks. So have students on a school bus who came in contact with the person who tested positive.
Further, all secondgrade teachers at the school were told to quarantine after the discovery of the positive case.
The district could not confirm the exact numbers of teachers or students asked to quarantine, but the staff directory for Toquam includes five second grade teachers. Enrollment of second grade students at Toquam last semester was about 114.
Sharon Beadle, spokesperson for the district, said contact tracing is more challenging with younger children, which is one of the reasons the district decided to have so many quarantine.
“They’re little kids, so we are erring on the side of caution,” Beadle said, adding that most of the
positive cases to emerge in the school district since the start of the school year have been at the middle school and high school levels.
The Toquam students in quarantine are part of the “blue” cohort of students who attend class in-person every other day. Second-grade students in the “green” group are still expected to attend classes in the building, but teachers will be replaced by a combination of substitutes, reading teachers and an administrative intern, as well as some additional remote learning, Beadle said.
Diane Phanos, the president of the Stamford Education Association teachers union, said teachers at Toquam are concerned about how the district is doing contact tracing, especially with younger children.
“I’m concerned because we’re hearing almost every day of a positive case in different schools,” Phanos said. “It’s very unsettling.”
Stillmeadow Elementary School was the only other primary education facility to have a positive case, and the building was closed for one day after the discovery.
None of the other cases have resulted in a school building closing.
Since the beginning of school on Sept. 8, there have been seven total cases of COVID-19 among students and staff in Stamford Public Schools. Both Stamford High School and Rippowam Middle School have had two positive cases, while Westhill High School has had one.
Beadle said that the cases inside Stamford High were not related to one another, nor were those inside Rippowam.
Superintendent Tamu Lucero has said that it is no surprise to see cases appear in such a large school system.
A protocol has been in place since the start of the year to handle cases when they arise.
If a student tests positive for COVID, his or her family is told to contact the school. Then the city Health Department conducts a risk assessment and contact tracing to determine who, if anyone, has had close contact with the infected person. That means looking at the person’s schedule to see who they shared a room with, and also interviewing the person to ask who they were in contact with.
The school district uses guidelines set by the Connecticut Department of Public Health that defines a close contact as spending at least 15 minutes within one day within six feet of a person with a confirmed diagnosis of the virus, or “having direct contact with an infected person’s droplets” from a cough or sneeze.
The district is planning to release an online dashboard on Thursday that will track positive cases in the school system, as well as how many are in quarantine.
Stamford Public Schools are handling the COVID-19 pandemic by following a hybrid model in which about 80 percent of students have been split into two groups which are alternating days in school buildings in order to allow adherence to social distancing guidelines. About 20 percent of students opted not to come back to school in person and are learning remotely full time in an “online academy.”