The spread of the novel coronavirus in the Verde Valley continued to grow after the Thanksgiving holidays, with a record high of 518 new cases between Friday, Nov. 27, and Friday, Dec. 4.
The spread in the community has begun affecting schools. The Arizona Department of Health Services previously identified three benchmarks — cases per 100,000, test positivity rate, and rate of respiratory illnesses among hospital patients — to aid in school decisions, and all three for Yavapai County have moved into the “red” zone, indicating “Substantial Transmission.” After two weeks of all three in the red, AZDHS recommends school closures.
“Though our goal is to always have students in school, staff and community health and wellness are of utmost importance,” Camp Verde Unified School District Administrator-in-Charge Danny Howe posted on the school’s Facebook page on Thursday, Dec. 3, announcing he would return the district to online learning. “This morning we were notified that the third benchmark has increased to red. CVUSD will be returning to a full distance learning model on Monday, Dec. 7.”
The district intends to reopen for in-person learning on Monday, Jan. 4.
Howe said that he still believes that schools are the safest place for children and points out that even among the students who have gotten sick, the symptoms have been mild. However, Howe said that with the virus spreading among staff, and with one cafeteria worker who died, the school district would not keep operating in-person instruction.
“The staff has been hit hard. We don’t have any subs. People are worn out, people are tired,” Howe said. “The kids are No. 1, don’t get me wrong. But at some point when your troops are down.”
Mingus Union High School District voted Nov. 19 to close down in-person learning for the week after Thanksgiving and return to in-person instruction on Monday, Dec. 7.
However, at a meeting on Thursday, Dec. 3, the MUHSD Governing Board voted 4-1 to shut down campus for the remainder of December and return the week of Jan. 4.
Board member Lori Drake was the dissenting vote, arguing that the students would still be better off at school.
“COVID-19 cases among our staff have increased this week, even as we work in a remote instructional environment,” MUHSD Superintendent Mike Westcott wrote Dec. 3. “Our district currently has five active positive cases among staff and seven active student cases, with 59 staff and students currently under quarantine. Such an absentee rate in an in-person learning environment would be very difficult to staff properly.”
As of press time, both Cottonwood- Oak Creek and Clarkdale-Jerome school districts — which only serve students eighth grade and younger, an age group that has fewer symptoms and less spread of the virus than high school students — expect to remain open for the immediate future.
Clarkdale-Jerome has a board meeting set for Tuesday, Dec. 8, which Superintendent Danny Brown expects will discuss the future of in-person learning based on the available data.
“Right now I’m kind of torn. I don’t really have a recommendation,” Brown said. “I think we have a really good mitigation plan in place that we’re following to make sure that students are wearing their masks. We’ve got physical distancing as much as we possibly can. We’ve had some confirmed cases, and we’ve had quite a few exposures to kids that we’ve had to quarantine. The biggest thing we’re seeing is kids coming to school who have already had a household exposure, and that just really wreaks havoc on our school because we have to contact trace, we have to quarantine kids, things like that. We’ve had no student-to-student spread.”
COCSD Superintendent Steve King said that he believes, based on the district’s mitigation efforts, that the school district will be able to remain open and has no plans to close down.
“The fourth metric that we’re looking at is what we are seeing in our schools,” King said of the benchmarks. “You come to our school, every kid is wearing a mask. We’re doing the contact tracing, we’re doing the quarantining. I’d rather shut down a class than shut down a school system. Our district has been very resolute in the protocols that we’ve undergone. What’s happening in Camp Verde could happen anywhere, including our schools. Right now we are not seeing it. In a total of three months being open, we’ve had 19 cases.”
All districts in the area have had issues finding substitute teachers, and COCSD posted advertisements looking for new substitutes to fill vacancies.
All Verde Valley communities have seen spread in the past week, with Cottonwood, Camp Verde and Sedona having 233, 100 and 56 new cases in the past week, respectively, while the Village of Oak Creek, Clarkdale, Cornville, Rimrock and Jerome have had 31, 36, 27, 32 and three new cases in the past week. Thirteen Verde Valley residents have died from COVID-19 over the past week, and Verde Valley Medical Center had 27 COVID-positive patients as of Sunday, nearly half of their total in-patients.
“This week we have consistently had greater than 20 patients in-house daily. These are the highest levels of in-patient cases since the onset of the pandemic,” VVMC Chief Medical Officer Leon Pontikes wrote in an email.
