A staff member at Oak Ridge Schools Extended Child Care was diagnosed with COVID-19 in late May, and on Monday, August 3, the employee still tested positive, Superintendent Bruce Borchers said.
A physician has cleared the staff member to return to work, Borchers said in a letter to families on Friday.
“The physician said that a person will likely continue to test positive several months after the initial virus, and that the individual is no longer contagious,” Borchers said.
[Read more…]
A staff member who was at Oak Ridge High School on Friday has tested positive for COVID-19, Oak Ridge Schools said Sunday.
The school system learned of the positive diagnosis on Saturday.
“Having this report Saturday morning allowed us to implement a 24-hour closure so we could thoroughly disinfect the building on Saturday,” Superintendent Bruce Borchers said in a letter to families. A second disinfectant fogging of the full building occurred on Sunday, Borchers said.
It’s the sixth overall COVID-19 case in Oak Ridge Schools and the fifth since July 15.
The other cases since July 15 involved a staff member who had been at Jefferson Middle School and ORHS, a staff member at JMS, a student at ORHS band camp, and an instructor at ORHS band camp.
In an earlier case in April, a staff member who had been volunteering at the school system’s food distribution sites tested positive for COVID-19.
[Read more…]Four out of five students in Oak Ridge Schools are attending classes in person at least two days per week, while one out of five have registered for an online-only option as the school system and families respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Here are the enrollment numbers for all of the schools on Friday:
The school system was showing a total enrollment of 4,658 on Friday, but Oak Ridge Schools Superintendent Bruce Borchers said it is too early to tell what the actual enrollment is.
“We should have a solid number in a couple of weeks,” he said.
It’s not clear how many families have selected a home school option during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The school system offered two options for the new school year, which started Wednesday and Thursday, depending upon the school.
[Read more…]Note: This story was updated at 5 p.m.
An Oak Ridge Schools staff member who has been at Jefferson Middle School and Oak Ridge High School has tested positive for COVID-19, the school system said Wednesday.
It’s the fifth overall COVID-19 case in Oak Ridge Schools and the fourth in the past two weeks, since July 15.
The schools learned of the positive test result for the staff member on Wednesday. The staff member, who has not been publicly identified, had been at JMS and ORHS last Friday.
[Read more…]Oak Ridge Schools on Tuesday announced a third COVID-19 case as schools prepare to resume this week.
A staff member at Jefferson Middle School has tested positive for the new disease, Oak Ridge Schools Superintendent Bruce Borchers said in a letter to families and staff members.
The staff member, who will not be publicly identified, took a precautionary test, immediately started a voluntary quarantine, and learned of the positive test result Tuesday morning, Borchers said.
The superintendent’s letter did not say whether the staff member has had symptoms of COVID-19.
It’s the third COVID-19 case at Oak Ridge Schools in the past two weeks. The other two cases were of an instructor and student at Oak Ridge High School band camp.
[Read more…]A student at the Oak Ridge High School band camp last week tested positive for COVID-19 this week, Superintendent Bruce Borchers said in a letter to community members Wednesday.
The student learned of the positive test result Tuesday night. The student did not report any symptoms before learning of the diagnosis, Borchers said. But before learning of the positive test result this week, the student had been in contact with other students and staff members during band camp through Tuesday of last week, Borchers said.
The student’s positive test result this week follows a positive test result of a band camp instructor last week. Neither the student nor the instructor are being publicly identified.
[Read more…]Note: This story was updated at 2 p.m. July 24.
Oak Ridge Schools will now have staggered classes for students at its two middle schools and one high school. Those students will now attend classes two days per week and then have online classes the other three days.
Elementary school students will attend classes five days per week.
The new plan was unanimously approved by the Oak Ridge Board of Education during a 45-minute special meeting Thursday afternoon.
The plan had been presented to the school board by Oak Ridge Schools Superintendent Bruce Borchers.
[Read more…]The Oak Ridge Board of Education will have a special meeting this afternoon to discuss the plan to re-open schools next week.
The meeting to discuss schools re-opening is scheduled to start at 2 p.m. Thursday, July 23. The school board will meet electronically under an executive order signed by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee. The order relates to protecting public health, safety, and welfare in response to COVID-19.
Oak Ridge Schools are scheduled to start July 29 with two options for students and families: 1) attending classes at school with new safety measures and contingency plans, and 2) online instruction through ConnectOR.
[Read more…]Note: This story was updated at 5:45 p.m.
An instructor at the Oak Ridge High School band camp has tested positive for COVID-19, Superintendent Bruce Borchers said in a letter to parents on Wednesday.
The band camp instructor, who worked with multiple students and staff members, had no symptoms before learning of the positive test result Wednesday morning, Borchers said.
The instructor, who isn’t being publicly identified, was immediately separated from the band camp and told to contact the appropriate county health department to report the diagnosis and ask for guidance, Borchers said.
[Read more…]After initially “strongly recommending” masks, students and staff members will now be required to wear face coverings in Oak Ridge Schools when physical distancing is not possible, Superintendent Bruce Borchers said Thursday.
A school re-opening plan published Monday, after families and staff members were surveyed, said masks would be strongly recommended, but not required, when students can’t stay six feet apart to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. Students in regular classroom settings probably can’t stay six feet apart, the plan said.
Parents objected. Many said the mask recommendation wasn’t enough. They said they would contact school administrators to ask for mandatory face masks.
On Thursday, Borchers said the change to mandatory masks was made after a review of the “current situation.”
[Read more…]Oak Ridge Schools will re-open July 29 with in-person and online options.
The re-opening plan was announced Monday by Oak Ridge Schools Superintendent Bruce Borchers.
The July 29 re-opening date is part of the 2020-2021 district calendar.
The re-opening plan was announced as the number of total and active COVID-19 cases has surged in Anderson County. The county added 39 new cases between Thursday and Monday, pushing the total to 144, and the number of active cases about doubled from 32 on Thursday to 63 on Monday.
In a recent survey, conducted before the surge in cases during the past four days, most Oak Ridge families—85 percent of those who responded—said they want the school system to return to “some semblance of normalcy with students participating in face-to-face instruction,” Borchers said.
Those who responded to the survey said their highest priorities while trying to bring students back to school safely are 1) regularly disinfecting common areas, 2) practicing social distancing, 3) providing temperature checks, 4) reducing non-essential visitors in the school, and 5) wearing masks as needed.
[Read more…]
Peter Thornton, a researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, holds the cube satellite, or CubeSat, that will be completely built soon and was developed by Robertsville Middle School students with help from teachers and mentors. Named RamSat, the cube satellite is scheduled to launch from Virginia on a space station resupply mission on Sept. 7, 2020. Thornton is pictured above during a mentors meeting at RMS on Thursday, May 28. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)
The small cube satellite built by Robertsville Middle School students with help from teachers, mentors, and NASA is scheduled to launch on a resupply rocket to the International Space Station in September, and it could be deployed into orbit a few hundred miles above Earth in October.
Testing of the satellite and its components, including a battery test and vibration tests, was scheduled to start this week.
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