With COVID cases rising, and more schools across the United States going remote, Oliver Ames High School has seen a notable increase of students going fully remote.
According to numbers obtained from the school, there are 234 students as of December 15th 2020 who are fully remote, making up 1/5th of the student population. This increasing number of remote students coincides with rising case numbers in Easton, as the virus has engulfed the United States in an onslaught of positive cases and deaths. Infectious disease experts fear that the case and death tolls will rise over the holiday break, even with a vaccine slowly rolling out to frontline workers.
Oliver Ames High School has been relatively quiet in terms of the caseload. With a no tolerance policy in place for masks, and other practices such as staggered cohorts, one way halls, and social distancing put in place, the school has seen only 15 positive cases as of December 15th. However, there is reason to believe that number will get higher over the next few weeks. There have been 9 new cases over the past two weeks, compared to 6 over the first two and a half months of reopening. While this number may not seem large at first glance, it is important to note students who are considered “close contacts” are forced to quarantine for 2 weeks after exposure. Oliver Ames does not track this metric.
The number of students who transition from hybrid to remote will be an interesting metric to watch as we enter January, and students are given the choice of opting back into a hybrid model or going remote. Students and parents will have a tough choice to make with certain factors being taken into account such as vaccine distribution, local cases, and state guidelines. So far, Massachusetts does not seem to be planning on imposing school closures, and local officials are determined to keep the school open for as long as they safely can.
With case numbers rising across the Commonwealth, not to mention the onslaught of cases expected from the holidays, OA may be forced to close down yet again, proving that even the strongest tigers need to know when to call it a day.