Oak Ridge Today

NAACP, Oak Ridge, Schools have back-to-school fair

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There is a back-to-school fair this evening (Saturday, August 7). It will include a presentation about the new school block program and tutoring, information booths, a hot dog meal, and a free movie.

The back-to-school fair is hosted by the NAACP Oak Ridge/Anderson County, Oak Ridge Recreation and Parks Department, and Oak Ridge Schools. It is scheduled at 6 p.m. Saturday, August 7, at Scarboro Community Center Gymnasium at 148 Carver Avenue in Oak Ridge.

At the fair, you can learn about tools for Oak Ridge parents and students at school booths about the new school year block program, the tutoring that is available, and family resources.

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Face masks required at Willow Brook Elementary starting Monday

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The COVID-19 case count dashboard by Oak Ridge School on Friday afternoon, Aug. 6, 2021.

Note: This story was updated at 10 a.m. Aug. 7.

Face masks will be required at Willow Brook Elementary School starting Monday as the number of COVID-19 cases has jumped in a few days from one case to 12. That’s more than half of the 22 current cases in Oak Ridge Schools.

The first case at Willow Brook was a staff member who had been infected, according to a report around Tuesday or Wednesday. On Friday, the outbreak at Willow Brook had grown from one COVID-19 case to 12. Eight of those were student cases, and four were staff cases.

“At this point in time, our data supports mandating masks for students and staff at Willow Brook Elementary School starting on Monday,” Oak Ridge Schools told families in an email Friday. “When active cases and transmission decrease, we will have the option to lift this mandate and return to making the wearing of masks optional.”

The overall number of current cases in Oak Ridge Schools has almost tripled from eight current cases on Tuesday or Wednesday to 22 on Friday.

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Oak Ridge Land Bank has news conference about downtown development

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The Oak Ridge Land Bank will host a gathering on Friday, August 6, at 5 p.m. on Wilson Street near Rice Road. At 5:30 p.m., there will be a news conference regarding the land bank’s Request For Proposals to develop Downtown Oak Ridge, a press release said.

The Land Bank, representing the community interest with respect to the development of a downtown district, is releasing a RFP for the purchase and development of property in accordance with the adopted “vision” for this district, the press release said.

Over the decades, multiple plans have called for creating a place where Oak Ridgers can live, work, and play, the press release said. The Wilson Street corridor borders Main Street shopping near the new American Museum of Science and Energy and planned conference center, and it is easily accessible from Oak Ridge Turnpike and Alvin K. Bissell Park, the press release said. It provides a “great opportunity to finally have a distinctive, uniquely Oak Ridge place for people to gather,” the release said. “The existence of a more urban, densely-developed environment, featuring apartments, condos, restaurants, local shops, offices, and beautiful green space, will attract new and different businesses to Oak Ridge.”

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Pellissippi State to require masks indoors

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Pellissippi State Community College will require face masks be worn in all indoor spaces effective Monday, August 9.

The college said its emergency management team based the decision on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID data tracker, which shows both Knox and Blount counties to have “high” levels of community transmission, as well as numbers of active COVID-19 cases from the Knox County and Blount County health departments. In Knox County alone, the number of active COVID-19 cases jumped from 198 on July 14 to 1,240 on August 4, a press release said. Case numbers are updated each Wednesday.

Fall classes begin Monday, August 23, and the college will have some masks available on each of its five campuses for those who arrive without one. Face shields are not sufficient, the press release said.

“We know this is frustrating and stressful and that we’re all tired of it,” said Pellissippi State President L. Anthony Wise Jr. “There are exciting weeks ahead as we welcome faculty and students back for the fall semester, many for the first time in months. We are going to take the challenges as they come and do the best we can to set a good example for our peers and our students by providing a safe environment for teaching and learning.”

Pellissippi State’s main campus is in Hardin Valley.

Pellissippi State said it will re-evaluate its mask policy at the end of September, using a return to “moderate” community transmission – sustained over 10 days to two weeks – as the metric for deciding when to relax the mask requirement. By waiting until the end of September to re-evaluate, the team will be able to see if Labor Day travel impacts local numbers, the press release said.

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Events to mark Hiroshima, Nagasaki anniversaries, call for nuclear abolition

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OREPA Peace Cranes at Y-12
Sharon O’Hara-Bruce of Lake Orion, Mich., ties a peace crane to a fence set up in front of the Y-12 National Security during a previous ceremony recalling the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945, near the end of World War II. (File photo)

Events planned in Oak Ridge and Knoxville on Friday and Saturday will commemorate the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, near the end of World War II, as organizers call for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

“There is a new energy for abolition,” said Ralph Hutchison, coordinator of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance. “Here and around the globe, actions and events will echo the demand of the international community in the Ban Treaty: nuclear weapons states give up their weapons.”

A press release from OREPA cited the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Under that treaty, the international community outlawed nuclear weapons, organizers said. The treaty was passed by 122 nations in June 2017 and entered into this past January, the press release said.

“There are only two possible endings to the story of nuclear weapons,” said Beatrice Fihn, director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, 2017 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. “Either we end nuclear weapons, or they will us. There is no other possible ending.”

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Sixteen cases of COVID in Oak Ridge Schools

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The COVID-19 Case Count Dashboard for Oak Ridge Schools on Thursday morning, Aug. 5, 2021.

Sixteen cases of COVID-19 have been reported in Oak Ridge Schools this school year. Fifteen of those cases are current, and one is recovered, according to the school system. The number of current cases appears to have about doubled in a few days, from eight to 15.

Almost half of the current cases, seven of them, are at Willow Brook Elementary School. Four of those cases are students, and three are staff members. That outbreak appears to have been reported in the past few days. A few days ago, there was one staff case reported at Willow Brook and no student cases.

Four cases of COVID-19 have been reported at Oak Ridge High School, all among students. Three of those are current, and one is recovered, Oak Ridge Schools said in a COVID-19 case dashboard posted on its website.

There are three current cases among students at Robertsville Middle School and two are among students at Jefferson Middle School.

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Roane State recommends face masks indoors

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Roane State Community College has updated its COVID-19 response plan to include the recommendation that all students, faculty, staff and visitors wear face masks when indoors on campus.

This change is in response to a number of factors, including a recent surge in COVID-19 cases locally, the new Delta variant, and new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Tennessee Department of Health, and the Tennessee Board of Regents, a press release said.

The updated face mask recommendation applies to anyone who enters a building on a Roane State campus, regardless of vaccination status. New signs are being posted on campuses to reflect this information, and the entire campus community has been notified of the request, the press release said.

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Oak Ridge Pediatrics has COVID-19 vaccines for 12+

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Oak Ridge Pediatrics has COVID-19 vaccines available for patients who are 12 years old and older.

You can call the office at (865) 482-4088 to reserve a time.

The vaccines are available for any eligible children needing the COVID-19 vaccination, according to East Tennessee Children’s Hospital.

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Poll: Do you think Oak Ridge Schools should require face masks?

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A small group of parents and two school board members on Monday said they support following federal guidance and requiring face masks in Oak Ridge Schools to help keep students, staff, and their families from getting infected with COVID-19 and spreading it. They cited the rising case numbers in Anderson County and Tennessee as the delta variant of the new coronavirus causes new case numbers to surge across the country, driving up hospitalizations and making more younger people sick.

The school system did not make a decision Monday, but school officials said they are watching the COVID-19 case numbers and could make a decision later. The school system required face masks last year but relaxed that requirement when cases declined over many months following the winter peak. Now, cases are trending back up, and it’s not clear how long that could continue.

School officials say they have also heard from parents who object to requiring masks again.

What do you think? Should Oak Ridge Schools require face masks in schools to help prevent the spread of COVID-19?

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Health commissioner: Vaccine the best tool to fight COVID

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Lisa Piercey

Vaccinations remain the best tool to fight COVID-19 as cases surge across the state, Tennessee Health Commissioner Lisa Piercey said Monday. More than 90 percent of COVID-19 cases and deaths in Tennessee are among the unvaccinated, and 90 percent of hospitalizations are, Piercey told reporters.

“The vaccine is the single best tool we have to fight COVID-19,” Piercey said.

Driven by the delta variant, cases in Tennessee have surged from a few hundred per day about a month ago to an average of almost 1,900 per day. Following the increase in cases, hospitalizations have risen from a few hundred at one time to more than 1,000 now. They haven’t been that high since February, after the winter peak in December and January, Piercey said.

“That is clearly the wrong direction,” she said.

She said the vast majority of those who are in the hospital, 90 percent, are unvaccinated. The unvaccinated make up even higher percentages of new COVID-19 cases and deaths in Tennessee: more than 93 percent of new cases and 95 percent of deaths.

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After early summer lows, COVID case, positivity rates continue to climb

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The chart above shows new COVID-19 cases per day in Anderson County in June, July, and early August. (Chart by Oak Ridge Today using Tennessee Department of Health data and Flourish for chart production).

There were 33 days in June and July when Anderson County reported either no new cases of COVID-19 or one. But that changed around July 12. The average number of new cases reported in Anderson County each day has steadily climbed, and the county is now reporting between 12 and 32 new cases per day.

That is still significantly below the winter peak in December and January, when the new daily case average was more than 100, with peaks over 200 new cases per day.

However, it’s not clear when the current increase in cases might slow down or end. Medical workers and health and government officials are warning about the spread of the delta variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, especially among the unvaccinated, and they are urging people to get vaccinated. Cases have surged in parts of the United States, including Tennessee and several other states in the Southeast.

On Sunday, the seven-day average of new cases in Anderson County was 18.4, according to the Tennessee Department of Health. That was up from 13.1 on Wednesday, four days earlier. The low point was a seven-day average of 0.4 new cases per day reported July 6.

The longer trend of new cases, a two-week average, was 13.6 on Sunday. That was more than four times as high as the previous two-week average of 3.0.

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Some ask for mask requirement in schools but no change yet

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The Oak Ridge Board of Education is pictured above on Monday, Aug. 2, 2021. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)

A small group of parents and two school board members asked for face masks to be required in Oak Ridge Schools, but no decision was made during a school board meeting Monday evening.

Some students are too young to get vaccinated, the parents and school board members said. Others have only had one COVID-19 vaccination shot and aren’t fully vaccinated. Four days into the new school year, parent Gretchen Toney said her daughter has already been exposed to COVID-19 at Robertsville Middle School and sent home to quarantine, potentially exposing her four-year-old son at home and continuing to prevent a visit by her father, who has cancer.

Parent Laetitia Delmau said her children at RMS and Oak Ridge High School are getting non-stop comments because they wear masks for their own protection, and the schools should be free of harassment and bullying.

Citing reports from their children and their own personal observations, parents said few people are wearing masks in Oak Ridge Schools.

The parents asked the school system to follow the guidance of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recommended on Tuesday that everyone should wear a mask indoors in K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status. The American Academy of Pediatrics has also recommended universal masking in schools this fall, and on Monday, the University of Tennessee announced it will require masks in many indoor settings this fall semester.

“I really request that we follow the CDC guidelines,” Toney said.

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