Jasper Co. schools to resume in-person classes, randomly test students, staff for COVID
After two weeks in virtual-only classes, Jasper County School District is resuming in-person classes Monday — and the schools are ramping up their COVID testing in the process.
The district first shut down Ridgeland-Hardeeville High School on Aug. 23 after the district recorded 24 COVID infections and 96 quarantines — including the school’s entire football, volleyball and cheerleading teams — in the first week of school.
The rest of the district followed Aug. 30 “due to the surge of the contagious virus, COVID-19 Delta variant in our community and schools, and the number of students and staff in quarantine,” Superintendent Rechel Anderson said in a press release at the time.
Going forward, the district is partnering with DocGo, a mobile medical services company, and South Carolina’s Department of Health and Environmental Control to provide COVID-19 testing services. The district and its partners are using a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
With the new testing services, the district will randomly test students and staff for COVID.
Students and staff who are unmasked will be tested weekly, whether they are vaccinated or unvaccinated. Students will be tested “with parental consent,” according to a Thursday press release from the district.
Per that release, “parents will be required to complete a consent form for testing of students.”
District spokesperson Travis Washington did not immediately respond to a request for clarification on whether parents will have to complete this consent form for their students to return to the building.
“JCSD’s Rapid Testing Site will continue at the Ridgeland Campus, and an additional Rapid Testing Site will be added to the Hardeeville Campus,” the release read. “The addition to the Hardeeville Campus will support needed testing for employees/students of JCSD and provide contract tracing.”
Sports practices for Ridgeland-Hardeeville High School resumed this week, and practices for Hardeeville-Ridgeland Middle School will resume Monday.
The district will keep the bus schedule it used before the switch to virtual, meaning that elementary-age bus riders will be dismissed early, while additional drivers are being hired and trained. Elementary-age car riders, as well as all middle and high school students, will be dismissed at normal times.
Several parents took to social media last month to complain about the lack of bus drivers in the district, an issue which stemmed from the district forcing all of its drivers reapply for their jobs in June.
Parents said drivers were running multiple routes, and that some children hadn’t arrived home from school until 9:30 p.m.
District coaches, school administrators and district administrators are working to get their commercial driver’s licenses, Thursday’s press release said.
“Parents/Guardians, those that can, are asked to continue transporting children to and from school,” the release read. “This will afford those families that have no other means of getting to school to utilize bus transportation. Bus Routes have been updated and will be posted.”