Jasper Co. charter school will return to all-virtual classes as COVID-19 risk rises
Ridgeland’s Polaris Tech Charter School announced Wednesday that all students will return to virtual instruction beginning Thursday due to Jasper County’s “high-incidence” COVID-19 rate.
“We monitor the DHEC numbers for COVID every day, and when Jasper County’s case numbers started climbing again, we knew our school family needed to stay flexible,” said Melissa Crosby, the school’s executive director, in the announcement.
“Fortunately, all of our students are familiar with online learning and our staff has done an amazing job of staying connected to the learners and their families.”
Polaris Tech is not a part of Jasper County School District, which hasn’t made any announcements to change its current reopening plan.
The school district began the year with all-virtual classes and allowed students to begin hybrid classes last month. District spokesman Travis Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The district’s board of education meets at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 10.
South Carolina’s Department of Health and Environmental Control releases a weekly report on COVID-19 activity that classifies each county in the state as low, medium or high-risk for the spread of COVID-19.
The DHEC classification system has three metrics:
Number of new cases in the past two weeks;
Whether new cases have increased, decreased or stayed level over two weeks;
Percent of positives among people tested for COVID-19 in the past two weeks.
Jasper County’s number of new cases fell in the “medium” risk category, with 186.2 new cases per 100,000 people in the past two weeks.
The trend in new cases fell in the “high” category, along with the county’s 10.8% rate of positives among COVID-19 tests in the past two weeks.
According to DHEC’s website, all four schools in the Jasper County district have reported more than zero but fewer than five COVID-19 cases among students and staff as of Monday.
That includes two students at Hardeeville Elementary School who tested positive last week, according to the Jasper Sun-Times.
Polaris Tech has not reported any COVID-19 cases, according to DHEC.
This story was originally published November 4, 2020 at 3:35 PM with the headline "Jasper Co. charter school will return to all-virtual classes as COVID-19 risk rises."