Students in Knox County schools have been quarantined at least 5,000 times since the start of the school year for exposure to COVID-19, according to numbers presented at Wednesday night’s school board meeting. With each quarantine requiring 14 days, students can miss up to 10 days of classroom instruction.

The school system also moves toward allowing more extra-curricular activities.

Some board members said parents and students are fed up with the disruptions and suggested looking for ways to limit the number of students affected by quarantines or reduce the number of days.

“I'm very concerned about the academic losses that will be experienced because of missed time in the classroom,” said Board Chair Susan Horn, who added the discussion item about quarantines to the agenda. “In addition, we continue to hear about the mental health of students as a huge concern, and students just living in fear of being quarantined.”

Dr. Martha Buchanan, director of the Knox County Health Department, attended the board meeting to give a simple message: Quarantine works and is necessary to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

“We use it for lots of other things, not just COVID,” Buchanan said. “And it works. And it’s working. Your cases in your schools are low, in part because of quarantine.”

Noting that the county just set a one-day record of 224 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, Buchanan said now is not the time to relax any restrictions already in place. As of Wednesday, Knox County Schools reported 79 active cases, 63 students and 16 staff. But a much larger number — 418 students and 238 staff — were in quarantine because of exposure to someone who had tested positive.

After a positive case is reported among students or staff, contact tracers from the Knox County Health Department work to identify anyone who was recently exposed to the infected person. Exposure means being less than 6 feet away from the person for more than 15 minutes over a 24-hour period. In practice, that often means students who sit in proximity to each other in a classroom. 

Board member Patti Bounds said that according to numbers provided to her by the school system, there have been 5,267 instances of student quarantine since schools reopened in August. Of those, she said, just 26 had tested positive for COVID-19.

“I think that’s a very low number,” Bounds said. “It really concerns me, and I would support this board seriously looking at (quarantine changes).”

Board member Jennifer Owen said more students could have been asymptomatic and never tested, but contagious.

“To keep our students who may be positive, and no way to know, to keep them contacting more and more students, and to allow that spread in the community to continue, I think would be horribly irresponsible of us,” she said.

Board member Daniel Watson said he is intimately familiar with the issue, since he has a daughter who has been quarantined twice and a son currently in quarantine — an experience that Watson described as “devastating.” Students in quarantine aren’t shifted into the school system’s virtual learning program; they have to try to keep up with their regular classes via online learning tools and whatever time teachers can spare for them.

But, Watson said, it is important to listen to health professionals in a pandemic.

“I don't think this conversation is in the realm of education that we're having tonight,” he said. “I don't think this is a conversation that educators or people who are vested in education are the ones that should be setting the tone. I think that’s the Health Department.”

A Cookeville Model?

The Health Department does not have jurisdiction over the school system, which by state law is under the control of the school board. But school administrators worked closely with the Health Department to develop their COVID-19 plan, which the board approved. The plan defers to the Health Department on deciding who needs to be quarantined after a positive case is reported.

Horn suggested the school board consider a model she said is being used in Putnam County, home to Cookeville. She said school officials there notify parents if a student in their child’s classroom tests positive and tells them to watch for symptoms, but they don’t do the kind of contact tracing that results in individual quarantines.

“They chose to not assist in quarantining kids,” she said. She added, “Even though their community numbers have increased, the student cases have stayed very low.”

Buchanan said you couldn’t isolate the student numbers from the community numbers, because infected students with mild or no symptoms could infect other people in their households.

“I have to look at our entire community,” she said. “And the risk that this poses to grandma and grandpa and mom and dad and baby sister, or whoever it is that's at home.” 

Board member Mike McMillan suggested that the board could try reducing the quarantine period to 9 or 10 days, a move that Buchanan said would not be supported by existing data.

Buchanan said there are some studies ongoing about the transmission rate of the disease in schools that practice mask wearing and social distancing, and early results are promising. But she said the information isn’t there yet to prompt changes in recommendations by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

McMillan said he hears a lot of complaints about the Health Department’s guidelines.

“There's some people here in the community, as well as on the board, who are tired of them being dictatorial,” he said. “And whatever they say, they act like it’s just the gospel truth.”

Vice Chair Virginia Babb said she doesn’t like the extent of the contact tracing, but she thinks the school system needs to continue to follow Health Department guidelines. She also noted that students just last week made their choices whether to attend school in person or virtually for the spring semester. The deadline was last Friday. 

“If we change our protocols, I do think we're going to have to open it up to parents who do not feel safe any longer sending their kids back to school,” Babb said. Superintendent Bob Thomas said it would be difficult to reopen the option and still have schedules ready for students by January.

A total of 6,366 students have signed up to return to in-person instruction in January. Another 1,225 are going the opposite direction, according to data provided by the school system. That will leave 13,064 students taking virtual classes, about 22 percent of total enrollment.

Board member Kristi Kristy added that teachers also have made their plans based on the school system’s existing guidelines. Teachers concerned about teaching in person were allowed to take unpaid administrative leave this semester, but they don’t have that option for the spring. 

“To loosen up the restrictions but then not give them that same option to take that leave of absence, I don't think that's fair to them, either,’” Kristy said.

Board member Evetty Satterfield also worried about the impact on already stressed teachers. "If we make this change, I'm fearful that this might be the straw that breaks the camel's back for some of our teachers," she said.

The board took no action on the issue Wednesday, leaving it uncertain whether it will be taken up at a later meeting. 

Thomas did offer the possibility of relaxing at least some restrictions on student extracurricular activities. Most school clubs and arts groups have been suspended during the pandemic, although athletics have been allowed to continue. Thomas said he would present the board with a plan next week to allow for in-school activities and live performances.

“We’re working on a plan that would align with our existing plan for athletics,” Thomas said.

The board received encouragement along those lines from two members of Halls High School’s Madrigals choral group. 

“It is extremely upsetting for those of us in the performing arts to have to sit back and watch athletic teams participating in the activities they love, while we are deprived of that experience in the name of health,” said Shelby Wright, a Halls senior.