2 school districts near Charlotte see spike in COVID, quarantines among students, staff
At least two Charlotte-area school districts on Friday reported a dramatic rise in the number of students, teachers and staff who tested positive for COVID-19 or were quarantined, as the more highly contagious delta variant races through communities.
COVID numbers more than quadrupled in the Iredell-Statesville Schools and more than doubled this week in the Union County Public Schools, according to new data from the school districts Friday.
In Iredell-Statesville Schools, active positive COVID cases soared from 69 last week to 286 this week, spokeswoman Boen Nutting said in an email to The Charlotte Observer. Of the total, 260 are students.
The number of ISS students quarantined because of close contact with someone who tested positive for the disease skyrocketed from 583 last week to 2,476 this week, she said.
Six schools in the district were on temporary remote learning as of Friday due to COVID-19 spread: North Iredell High School, Lakeshore Middle School, West Iredell Middle School, Central Elementary School, East Iredell Middle School and Scotts Elementary School, Nutting said.
Only three of the 41 schools in the district reported no active COVID case this week, she said: Lakeshore Elementary, the Discovery Program at the Springs school and Union Grove Elementary School.
Concern over the rising COVID numbers prompted the Iredell-Statesville Board of Education on Tuesday to mandate that everyone wear a face covering in schools. The vote was 5-2.
Masks are still optional in Union County Public Schools, where the number of students and staff quarantined this week rose to 5,410, from nearly 2,000 the previous week, according to the school system’s COVID-19 dashboard.
The number of positive cases in the district jumped to 367 this week, compared with 176 the week before, the dashboard shows.
Attempts by the Observer on Friday to reach UCPS officials were unsuccessful.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools last reported COVID data on Monday.
CMS reported that 97 of 178 schools had at least one coronavirus case over the past two weeks. But fewer than 10 schools reported that at least 25 of their students had actively quarantined during that span.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg leaders have said they hope to avoid widespread quarantines in the district by having strict rules around masks to cut down on the spread of COVID-19. At the end of the first week of school, CMS reported 125 new COVID-19 cases among students and 50 among staff.
This story was originally published September 4, 2021 at 7:00 AM with the headline "2 school districts near Charlotte see spike in COVID, quarantines among students, staff."