Two Warren County Schools Stop In Person Learning

Warren County High School and Warren County Middle School went to all virtual learning today, after the two schools top the list of students testing positive for COVID.

Warren County Director of Schools Grant Swallows said there were 50 student cases announced Monday, and at least 12 new cases popped up so far this week. Swallows said the plan is to return on November 30, but that date is not set in stone.

“One of the things that’s important to us and things we’re trying to stress to our families is to communicate with us even through the holiday and we’re using our health department as well,” Swallows said. “We just need to see a drastic reduction in the number of positive cases in those two schools especially, so that we can go back to school on Monday, the 30th. I set that date just so that we’ve got a target.”

Swallows said there is not a set number of cases that would ensure returning after Thanksgiving Break. Swallows said work is being done to try and identify where it’s popping up in the school system.

“Our plan has been all along to identify pockets, problem areas and then address those so that we can try to limit the spread of the virus,” Swallows said. “We’ve got some schools in our district that have no cases or might only have one or two, so we’re gonna leave them operating under the same schedule that they’ve been. You know, we’re just in a time of a national pandemic, you see multiple cases in a couple of schools and it’s an alarming thing.”

Swallows said November 30 was the best option to address the cases quickly. Instead of waiting for the two schools to return after the Winter vacation.

“At the end of the day, I’m not sure that when you start to see… I mean, at one school in particular we had seven new positive cases on Monday, five on Tuesday,” Swallows said. “That’s a disturbing trend and we wanted to try to put a stop to that as quickly as we could and that’s basically the reason we made a decision to do that.”

Breakfast and lunch will be made available to students at their school from 11:00 AM until 1:00 PM. Parents are allowed to pick up the meals for their child.