The Anchorage School District is reporting three dozen active COVID-19 cases among its staff and students as it moves forward with its plan to slowly phase students back into classrooms starting next month.
As of Friday, there were 36 active cases among staff and students in the school district and 127 people in quarantine after having close contact with someone who tested positive, according to the district’s data. Additionally, five athletic teams have some or all members in quarantine: football teams at East High School and Service High School, the South High School cheerleading team, the West High school flag football team and Service basketball open gym.
The school district does not provide information about which schools or buildings the active cases are related to in order to protect the privacy of students and staff, spokeswoman Lisa Miller said.
Schools have been closed to in-person classes since March due to the pandemic. Earlier this month, the district released a plan that brings students in pre-kindergarten through second grade, and high-needs special education students through sixth grade, into classrooms on Nov. 16.
At a school board meeting this week, the district heard outcry from teachers, parents and community members over returning to school while the coronavirus is rampant in Anchorage.
[Anchorage School Board hears outcry against plan to return young students to school]
On Friday, Alaska reported its 30th straight day of triple-digit daily case increases, with 151 new cases within the Municipality of Anchorage alone.
Last week, nearly 1,000 Anchorage residents tested positive for COVID-19 and 120 were school-aged children, said Dr. Bruce Chandler, medical officer with the Anchorage Health Department, at a community briefing Friday.
The virus is getting into schools through students and staff who pick it up in the larger Anchorage community, superintendent Deena Bishop said during Tuesday’s school board meeting. No in-school transmission or case clusters have occurred in the district’s in-school reading program for young students or its athletic teams, Bishop said.
Bishop called that a testament to the effectiveness of the district’s mitigation techniques. Quarantines are an important piece of that mitigation, she said.
Miller said that to the best of the district’s knowledge, there has been no person-to-person transmission in its buildings. The district conducts contact tracing for every case, she said.
Anchorage Health Department director Heather Harris said Friday that the department is working with the school district on its reopening plans. It is important to have a “gradual and phased approach," she said.
Dr. Janet Johnston, epidemiologist with the Anchorage Health Department, said that although there is risk of infection when opening schools, there are also other risks for children and families when schools are kept closed, such as risks to mental health.
There “aren’t any easy choices at this point,” Johnston said. “There’s some mildly encouraging evidence that schools are not turning out to be the big superspreaders that people thought that they might be.”
When schools develop careful mitigation plans using techniques like social distancing and masking, they can help keep the spread of infection down, she said.