The planned “return to normalcy” hoped for in school districts across the country is starting to seem more and more like a premature pipe-dream in some places as the Delta variant of COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc on communities nationwide.
More than a dozen states in the U.S. have seen at least one school close completely for quarantining purposes after COVID outbreaks. Still others have had to exile entire grade levels’ worth of students or institute hybrid schedules.
In Georgia’s Johnson County, which has over 1,000 students on its rolls for the current school year, online instruction was reinstated across the board until September 13, due to 40% of its students having to quarantine just weeks into the fall semester. Superintendent Eddie Morris made the call.
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“We just couldn’t manage it with that much staff out, having to cover classes and the spread so rapid,” Morris told the Associated Press.
The state of Georgia as a whole reported Friday that more than one out of every 100 school-age children has received a positive COVID diagnosis.
The Delta surge is not the only cause for this huge wave of cases among children. Schools also changed many of their COVID-protective protocols over the summer, specifically removing mask mandates. This is true in Georgia, where fewer than one-fourth of all students attend schools that still require masks.
As a result, more than 68,000 students are now being affected by school shutdowns. Children under 12 are still currently ineligible to receive the COVID vaccine in America.
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