A group of fewer than 25 Buena Vista High School students is on quarantine for the rest of the week, after a household member of a student tested positive for COVID-19. Pending test results, the students may continue quarantine next week. There are no confirmed positive cases at the school at this time.
The district is now reexamining plans for the upcoming homecoming weekend Oct. 30 and 31, as well as the time capsule event and tours of the new phase of the middle and high school planned for Oct. 31. But it remains committed to Halloween activities for elementary and preschool children: Elementary students will get to have their traditional parade down Main Street at 2 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30. Spectators are permitted on the route with social distancing. Preschool children will have a small parade on Thursday, Oct. 29 in the school parking lot, no spectators.
The district contacted families of the affected students on Monday, Oct. 26, a snow day that gave the County Response Team time to investigate the situation. The quarantined students are now on remote learning.
“We were able to use targeted tracing to identify only close contacts, which kept us from having the entire school quarantined,” Superintendent Lisa Yates wrote in a letter to parents on Tuesday.
The Buena Vista schools continue to emphasize in-person learning for all students, which is a departure from many other districts in Colorado that began the year with remote learning or a hybrid schooling plan.
Yates noted that schools do not appear to be major spreaders of the virus. “This does not mean transmission cannot happen within school,” she said. “It just means that to date, schools have not been found to be primary sources of transmission… Schools continue to be a relatively low-risk gathering.
“This means while we take serious precautions to reduce the risk of transmission, we respond in ways that allow us to maintain in-person learning for most students most of the time,” she continued. “This means there will be intermittent disruptions for some over long-term remote learning.”
She asked that the community continue/adopt safe behaviors. “Transmission in our county is still active so we ask you to join us in your own risk reduction efforts to keep our students learning,” she said, adding that “students who are not fully in-person are less likely to show academic and social growth at the same rate as those in-person full time.”
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