​​​​COLUMBUS, Ohio — Schools that had to shut their doors temporarily this fall to control COVID-19 outbreaks are now trying to get back on track following the disruptions.


What You Need To Know

  • Superintendents said temporary school closures can be an effective mitigation strategy

  • Closures are a last resort when schools have high case counts and quarantine numbers

  • Administrators said some students who get COVID-19 experience more serious symptoms

When districts reopened this year without mask mandates, they faced a new challenge in that each positive COVID-19 case could result in a dozen or more additional students quarantined due to protocols for unmasked exposures. 

School officials that made the call to go remote say they had no choice with hundreds of students in quarantine. 

The first week of class for Licking Valley Schools came right after the Hartford Fair, a popular week-long event for many of the families in the district, Superintendent David Hile said.

He said the virus likely bubbled up in the community from the county fair, resulting in a COVID-19 flare-up at the district’s high school when students and staff returned.

“We pretty much had an outbreak right from the beginning of the school year,” he said. 

For the first few weeks, Hile said school officials were doing nothing but contact tracing. By the end of August, 38 students were sick, more than half of the high school’s student body, 310 students, were in quarantine and one student was admitted to Nationwide Children’s Hospital. At that point, the high school went to online classes for two weeks. 

Hile said the temporary school closure worked. By the end of the two-week closure, the number of positive cases was down to six.

“It just only made sense that you get them away from each other as much as possible and wait for the numbers go down,” he said. “And over that two-week period of time that we were out, we were able to see that we were having less and less COVID positive students.”

Dawn Davis's 15-year-old son was affected by a two-week closure of Lexington Local Schools that began on Sept. 7. She said it was hard for him to have to switch back to remote learning. He had some Zoom classes during the closure, but most of the work was solo work online, Davis said. 

“He missed the first week of school because we had COVID in the house, so then he finally goes back to school, and then they shut down for two weeks. It was very frustrating,” she said.

Davis said she understands the school’s decision to close. With some of the teachers out sick and a lack of substitutes, she said the district would’ve had to double up classes, making it even harder to socially distance. 

However, she disagrees with the schools new policy to require masks. She said her son is uncomfortable wearing one throughout the school day. 

In Springfield, Ohio, Clark-Shawnee Local Schools opted for a shorter closure the week before Labor Day, separating students for five days and requiring masks when the students returned. 

Just 10 days into the school year, 330 students, 18% of the district, were in quarantine, prompting the move to close, Superintendent Brian Kuhn said. Student after student was being called into the administrative office and sent home. 

“We were moving kids out just nonstop,” he said. “We had to hit the brakes. We had to reset.” 

Due in part to the implementation of a mask mandate, Kuhn said the number of quarantines is now down to just 13, and only two of those quarantined students were exposed at school. 

“I know that people don't like masks,” he said. “We were all excited that we had the opportunity to start the school year without them, but it didn't keep kids in school.”

On Oct. 18, the district is returning to a mask-optional policy, and Kuhn while he believes in the power of the mask, he said he’s optimistic that there won’t be another surge like the first. He said COVID-19 outbreaks amid the delta variant appear to “drop like a cliff” a few weeks the spike. 

“That phenomenon is what we're seeing. We saw this huge increase in cases and quarantines and now it's really dropped off,” he said.

The outbreak and the closure were difficult for just about everyone in the district, he said.

Some in the school community became sick suffered more serious symptoms, teachers struggled to move forward with their curriculum due to absences and students learned in an less-than-ideal remote learning environment because the district isn’t set up with dedicated teachers for virtual school this year, Kuhn said. 

“Whether it's work through Google Classrooms or remote videos, nothing beats being in a classroom hearing from your teacher and having time to have questions answered. Nothing’s going to be better than that,” he said.