Charlotte Catholic goes all-virtual this week after 4 Covid cases
Private school had gone with fully in-person classes on Aug. 31; plans to go to hybrid model next week and resume full classroom learning on Sept. 28, letter to parents says
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First school in Charlotte to step back temporarily from in-classroom instruction; no evidence of on-campus spread
(Ivan Aleksic/Unsplash)
Charlotte Catholic High School, which started the school year two weeks ago with in-person classes, is going all virtual for the rest of this week after four people on campus tested positive for Covid.
It’s the first example in Charlotte of a school that had started with classroom instruction shifting temporarily to all-virtual.
In a letter to parents posted on the school’s website on Tuesday, principal Kent Telford wrote:
We will use this opportunity to complete additional deep cleaning throughout the facilities and conduct any further contact tracing related to the four cases of Covid-19 contracted off campus that we previously reported to you. As of this morning, we have received no indication of additional positive results among those quarantined.
Telford said the school made the decision in consultation with the Mecklenburg County Health Department.
He said in the letter that the “four members of our school community tested positive after separate incidents of off-campus exposure to coronavirus.” He said those testing positive were not believed to have contracted the virus on campus, and the school identified others who might have been exposed.
The school will return to a mix of online and in-person learning on Monday, Telford said in the letter. It will resume full in-person instruction on Sept. 28.
Since some schools in North Carolina reopened to students, few have reported problems with Covid. A couple schools in Union County closed temporarily last month after positive test results. As of Tuesday, the state said just 7 schools statewide had “clusters” of Covid cases, even though 54 public school districts totaling 446,000 students returned with a mix of in-person and virtual learning. A “cluster” is defined as 5 or more people at a school testing positive for Covid. Charlotte Catholic is not on that list.
Many of Charlotte’s private schools — including Charlotte Country Day, Charlotte Christian, Providence Day and Charlotte Latin — have returned with full in-person instruction or a blend of online and classroom instruction.
Charlotte Catholic is the fourth-largest private school in the Charlotte region, with more than 1,200 students in grades 9-12, according to the most recent edition of the Charlotte Business Journal’s Book of Lists.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education meets tonight at 6 p.m. to discuss returning public school students to the classroom. The Ledger previewed that meeting this morning.
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