Over 100 students and staff have been impacted after an additional case of COVID-19 was reported at Skowhegan Area High School on Friday.
In a letter sent to the community on Friday evening, School Administrative District 54 Superintendent Jon Moody said that there were two cases reported on Friday, one at the high school and another at Skowhegan Area Middle School. On Thursday, a case of COVID-19 was reported at the high school, resulting in a remote learning day on Friday for students.
As a result of the two positive cases at Skowhegan Area High School, 10 staff and 95 students have been asked to quarantine.
Students worked remotely under the district’s “red plan” learning schedule on Friday with the intention to return to the in-person learning on Monday under the hybrid model. But because of the high number of students impacted with school and nonschool exposures, the district is tasked with finding staffing for the school on Monday.
“Because of the high number of impacted staff, there will be challenges staffing the school on Monday,” Moody said in the letter. “We will be working over the weekend on staffing and will make a final determination on Sunday.”
The positive case at Skowhegan Area Middle School has resulted in 13 staff and 14 students being asked to quarantine as a result of potential exposure.
“As you can see from the cases above, the impacts to schools from these recent cases of COVID-19 are significant,” Moody said. “We will continue to do our best to keep our schools open.”
According to a spreadsheet on the district’s website, there have been a total of 41 positive cases of COVID-19 within the district since the school year began, 22 of those among students and 19 among staff. There have been 20 positive cases outside of school, meaning that students or staff contracted the virus outside of school and were never in schools at any point while sick or contagious; two cases have been reported among students at Somerset Career and Technical Center. In total, 814 have been asked to quarantine since the beginning of the school year.
MSAD 54 serves the towns of Canaan, Cornville, Mercer, Norridgewock, Smithfield and Skowhegan.
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