JAMESVILLE-DEWITT SCHOOLS – Jamesville-DeWitt Superintendent Peter Smith presented on district-wide COVID-related updates during the board of education’s Jan. 10 meeting.

His report informed the in-person attendees and those watching over Zoom that approximately 150 positive cases had come about in the district throughout the week leading up to the meeting.

An accompanying graph displayed a day-to-day breakdown of the tallies by building, with the high school showing a Jan. 5 case count of just below 25, the highest single-day total of the seven-day stretch.

Adding to the emergence of the Omicron variant in the fall and the recent distributions of at-home tests, which would give way to a greater prevalence of positive case identifications, Smith said the spike could also be attributed to the fact that the week in question marked the return to school after holiday break gatherings.

The total dropped to below 10 for the high school by Friday, Jan. 7, and though it climbed back up to 15 once the following Monday rolled around, that number also included cases reported over that weekend.

Pointing to the unfavorable impacts on academic performance, social-emotional well-being and instructional time that would result, Smith said it would take a “dramatic change in circumstances” for the district to pivot to remote or hybrid learning, additionally because he said the in-school transmission rate has been “very, very low” for Jamesville-DeWitt.

He further stated that the district would keep track of staffing concerns while “doubling down” on safety procedures like masking, social distancing and surveillance testing in its schools.

Smith also made clear that students and staff members who test positive should only return to school once their five-day isolations, runny noses and productive coughs have all ceased and once their fevers have subsided for a full day.

If someone has COVID symptoms but tests negative with an at-home test, they will be told to isolate for the recommended five days—or 10 days if immunocompromised—unless a PCR test produces the same conclusion, Smith said.

Since its administrators have minimal contact-tracing abilities on their own, the district is relying on positive-testing people to directly inform anyone they may have exposed.

In early January, the district began tracking self-reported cases while continuing to receive notifications about test results from the Onondaga County Health Department.