The Webb City school district shut down its kindergarten center after 10 employees — including eight teachers — tested positive for COVID-19.
One employee was hospitalized but has been released.
The Madge T. James Kindergarten Center, which has an enrollment of 200 students, will be closed through Labor Day. It is expected to reopen Sept. 8.
"We had been tracking over the last week and a half the number of staff we had testing positive and Tuesday of last week we made a decision to close that attendance center ... and had all the staff tested," Superintendent Anthony Rossetti told the News-Leader. "As a result, we found a couple more."
More: SPS posts weekly count of COVID-19 cases for students, employees
After consulting with the Jasper County Health Department, the district opted to keep the center closed until after the long holiday weekend.
"We have an outside contractor that will come in and help clean the building as well," he said.
"The safety of our kids and our staff is definitely a priority."
Rossetti said the kindergarten center has a staff of 24. He said a total of 10 employees tested positive.
"We don't have any students that have tested positive that we are aware of. We did not want to expose our students to that," he said.
The district developed a Cardinal Comeback Plan that included details about what may trigger the temporary closure of a school.
"Part of our plan was to watch our trends and if we see that this is a problem, whether it is students or staff, we're going to shut that thing down and then wait a period of time so we can put our other pieces in place before coming back," he said.
"This is something we had in our overall plan. However, we didn't realize it was going to happen that quickly."
More: Evangel tests each student on campus for COVID-19. The results are in
The 4,500-student district provides a COVID-19 quarantine dashboard, updated weekly. Through Aug. 27, a total of 12 staff tested positive and 21 staff were quarantined. There were six students who tested positive and 33 in quarantine.
Masking is required and other safeguards, including social distancing, have been put in place this fall.
The only school shut down at this time is the kindergarten center. The district is working with the families of kindergarten students to provide lessons during this period.
"We have the ability to switch to virtual," he said.
Rossetti said the experience has provided a road map in case of future outbreaks.
"We have learned a great deal and we are continuing to manage this and mitigate this as best we can," he said. "Our view is if things are trending in a wrong direction, then in consulting with the Jasper County Health Department, we've made the best decision to keep everybody safe."
Claudette Riley is the education reporter for the News-Leader. Email news tips to criley@news-leader.com and consider supporting vital local journalism by subscribing. Learn more by visiting News-Leader.com/subscribe.
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Webb City closes kindergarten center after COVID-19 outbreak, 10 test positive - News-Leader
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