District reports 33 virus cases in first week

Superintendent says numbers not ‘abnormal’

FREMONT >> With seven days of classes in the books, 33 Fremont Unified School District students, teachers and other staff have come down with COVID-19, although district officials say most of them caught the virus off campus.

Since the Aug. 18 start of the school year, 27 students and six staff members have reported getting the virus as of the end of Thursday, according to the district. Four other staff members got COVID-19 before students arrived since the district began tracking cases on Aug. 1, bringing the total infected to 31.

District Superintendent CJ Cammack said the reopening of schools has been successful overall but acknowledged there have been some issues, such as those recently raised by some teachers and staff about stuffy classrooms with malfunctioning ventilation systems, which could be unhealthy for those inside.

The district has about 33,000

students and 4,730 teachers and other staff members.

“We certainly are mindful of the number of cases we have. When we look at them across the entire scope of students and staff that we serve, as of now it’s a 0.10% case rate,” Cammack said, adding that those numbers don’t seem “abnormal” when compared with other large districts.

Cammack said 95% of the staff has reported they are fully vaccinated.

“Obviously, we want our case count to be zero, that’s the ideal,” he said. “But we recognize that when there is COVID in the community, we will see COVID cases in our school. We cannot operate in a vacuum that is different than what is happening in our community.”

San Jose Unified, with about 30,000 students, recorded 21 cases in the first five days of school. Oakland Unified recorded roughly 100 cases after almost three weeks of school.

No classrooms or schools have been temporarily closed in Fremont, Cammack said, and the district is keeping Alameda County Public Health Department officials in the loop to help it determine whether and when classes may have to be temporarily closed so students and teachers can quarantine.

Though he couldn’t provide numbers, Cammack said that based on contact tracing and investigations, “many of our cases have been contracted outside the school system,” not from people on campuses spreading it to each other.

“It’s uncertain how much that may change” in the coming months, he said.

COVID cases so far have been reported at elementary schools, an early learning center, middle schools, high schools and the district office.

John F. Kennedy High School had four cases and Washington High School had three — all students. Patterson Elementary had four student cases and one staff case, according to the district’s web page.

When a positive case is discovered or reported, Cammack said multiple steps are taken, beginning with contact tracing and case investigation.

“We gather info from the person who tested positive about what their schedule was, who they were around, and that sets the initial framework of identifying who would be considered a close contact,” Cammack said. A close contact is someone who was within six feet of a COVID-infected person for more than 15 minutes in 24 hours.

The district also factors in seating charts and class schedules to determine whether students or teachers visited other places on campus such as a library or computer lab.

Notifications about positive test cases are then sent to the entire school community where it occurred. People who may have been in close contact with a person who tested positive are individually notified, he added.

Neetu Balram, a spokesperson for Alameda County Public Health Department, said the agency provides guidance in the effort to keep students in classrooms and avoid unnecessary quarantines.

Cammack said the district is exceeding county health guidelines in some areas, like requiring everyone to wear masks at all times, even while outdoors.

The district is also offering morning or afternoon testing at each school site once a week, and by Sept. 7 it’ll make testing available all day once a week.

The district recently won an $810,000 grant to help cover testing costs.

The district upgraded its ventilation system filters to denser ones to help better clean the air, and added standalone air purifiers “to every single classroom, office, gymnasium, library and auxiliary space in the district,” Cammack said.

Despite the district’s efforts to improve its systems across all its 42 schools, Cammack noted that Centerville Junior High School, Horner Middle School, and Irvington High School have had ventilation problems in some rooms and buildings.

At a Wednesday school board meeting, some teachers and staff said they were concerned about warm temperatures, poor circulation and high carbon dioxide levels in their classrooms and buildings.

“District staff has visited Horner several times and have claimed the AC is in working condition but anyone who walks into one of these rooms will tell you otherwise,” teacher Justin Valencia told the board.

“Hot rooms indicate not only a lack of cooling but also of air circulation, which is further reinforced by the dangerously high CO2 levels in the room, which range from 1,000 parts per million and over — which is already unhealthy and can lead to headaches — to as high as three thousand,” he said.

Anne Chung, a math teacher at Irvington High School, said the carbon dioxide monitor in her classroom hovers above 1,000 parts per million all day once students are in the room, even with her “running the two district-provided air purifiers at full blast all day long.”

“Our staff has worked to correct those problems,” Cammack said, “and by Friday morning, many of those issues have already