New Fairfield schools saw ‘significant absences’ this week due to COVID

NEW FAIRFIELD — As dreaded but expected, the school district has seen a large number of student and staff absences following the recent winter break.

“We’ve had significant absences this week,” Assistant Superintendent Julie Luby said Thursday.

Of the roughly 2,100 students in New Fairfield’s school system, almost 25 percent were absent Monday and nearly 20 percent were out Tuesday.

Student attendance slightly improved by Thursday, but school staff numbers started going in the opposite direction.

“In all four buildings, there were more staff out Thursday than in the beginning of the week,” Luby said.

The number of absent students went from 453 on Monday to 376 by Thursday, while the number of absent staff rose from 29 on Monday to 50 on Thursday. There was no school Wednesday or Friday due to winter weather conditions.

“We had many, many absences — including three of five school nurses — and it’s been a very challenging week,” Superintendent Pat Cosentino said Thursday, thanking staff members who stepped up to fill in for their absent colleagues.

Luby said the recent student absence rate reflects “a mix of things” — from students who have tested positive for COVID and those exposed to the virus and are quarantining, to those whose families were not comfortable sending them back after winter break and students with symptoms of an illness that may not be COVID.

The district has new COVID protocols — one of which prohibits someone with any sort of symptom from coming to school.

“At this point, COVID symptoms mirror the common cold and so if you have any symptoms at all, you are to stay home,” Luby said.

Contact-tracing will also no longer be conducted for potential in-school spread.

After finding there to be “very little in-school spread” when students in school are masked and using mitigation strategies, Luby said the state Department of Education and Department of Public Health have deemed contact-tracing for in-school COVID cases neither “necessary nor appropriate.”

“Their stance is that with the community spread that we’re seeing and the big number of cases, it’s not a meaningful data point,” she said.

In the absence of contacttracing for in-school spread, Luby said the state has asked the district to “provide daily updates on the number of new cases by grouping.”

School officials are working to update the format of the district’s online COVID dashboard to show daily and cumulative numbers of new cases among students in each grade and staff at each school.

Luby said the update should be complete by Monday.

As of Thursday, 45 students and four staff from New Fairfield High School were in isolation after testing positive for COVID-19, according to the dashboard, and 28 students and two staff members were in quarantine due to close contact with a possible COVIDpositive individual.

As of Dec. 23, COVID numbers for New Fairfield’s other three schools were as follows:

⏩ Consolidated Elementary School: Ten students and three staff were in isolation with confirmed COVID cases; 71 students and one staff member in quarantine.

⏩ Meeting House Hill School: Nine students and one staff member were in isolation with confirmed COVID cases, and 16 students were in quarantine.

⏩ New Fairfield Middle School: Forty-five students and four staff were in isolation with confirmed COVID cases; 28 students and two staff members were in quarantine.

Due to the “extraordinary number” of student absences following winter break, Luby said some temporary changes have been made to Q-School.

Since remote learning is not an option this year, the district introduced QSchool as a way to provide remote instruction to students in quarantine.

Luby said the large number of students in quarantine following winter break was too much for the district’s two Q-School engagement coordinators to handle alone, so five “guest teachers” were brought in to help.

“Feedback from the QSchool teachers is that it went smoothly,” she said. “We have a well-oiled machine in place and the additional teachers made it work very well.”

There were 210 students in quarantine by the end of Thursday, according to Luby, who said the QSchool changes will be revisited later next week.