As Beaufort Co. schools surpass 400 COVID cases, Board of Ed rejects going all-virtual
Beaufort County School District has surpassed 400 COVID-19 cases among students and staff, according to a report released Thursday night, less than two hours after the school board rejected a motion to return to all-virtual classes.
The district reported 59 new COVID-19 cases, some of which were cases from previous weeks due to a backlog in reporting at South Carolina’s Department of Health and Environmental Control.
In total, the district has reported 458 COVID-19 cases since Sept. 28, logging 52 for the current week and 71 for the previous week.
Of those 123 “active” cases, 31 are staff members, district spokesperson Candace Bruder said Thursday.
At a special-called board meeting Thursday evening, board member William Smith made a motion for the board to direct Superintendent Frank Rodriguez “to return back to virtual learning as soon as possible.” It failed 1-10, with Smith as the lone “yes” vote.
New board members Angela Middleton and Ingrid Boatright both said they supported in-person learning, with former district teacher Middleton saying the achievement gap “has grown into the Grand Canyon” under virtual learning.
Other board members cited disruptions for working parents, the existing online-only option for students and Rodriguez’s earlier remarks about the lower infection rate inside schools as the reason for their “no” votes.
The district has about 24,000 students and staff combined. About 1.9% of the district’s total student and staff population have contracted the virus since Sept. 28.
That’s lower than Beaufort County’s infection rate of 5.2% of the total population since March. But it’s a 0.45% increase in overall infections from Monday, when the district returned from winter break to full-time, in-person instruction for the first time since March. The number of cases reported in the district has grown 29% in the last three days.
One teacher called into the meeting to say that he believed returning to full-time, in-person instruction was “irresponsible and reckless,” adding that he comes in contact with 150 students and teachers every day while teaching seven classes.
“My colleagues and I will become super-spreaders because we can’t social distance,” he said.
Superintendent Rodriguez told the board Thursday that he understood teachers were “nervous” about the return to full-time instruction, but said he had been reassured by State Epidemiologist Linda Bell and a doctor at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston that classrooms “are not a setting for transmission of the disease.”
The board took two additional votes under Thursday’s COVID-19 update: One asking the finance committee to examine “$1,000 for hazard pay for teachers and staff,” and one to approve a letter to S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster and the Beaufort County legislative delegation asking to prioritize and expedite COVID vaccines for educators and staff. Both motions passed unanimously.
Teachers and educational support staff are included under Phase 1b of South Carolina’s vaccination plan, which could begin within a few weeks.