Thompson, ND Kindergarten Class Quarantined Due to COVID-19

THOMPSON, ND (trfnews.i234.me) Just as the school year is getting underway, COVID-19 has quarantined a kindergarten class in Thompson, North Dakota.
uh Neil Berg here on the phone with me and superintendent john mouse of the uh thompson school district where uh kovid like everywhere else has sprung up uh you had a kindergarten garden class hit pretty hard yeah we had a positive case that we were informed of on uh sunday morning and then uh just felt that we had to act fast and um you know with those kids being five years old and um kind of their first experience with school we just kind of determined that the whole class would be uh quarantined as we as we kind of investigated to try to do the the contact tracing um you know obviously the older they get the little easier they have to understand and then stay apart but at that age it was fairly difficult so that was kind of when the decision was made so how many kids and the teacher all together and how long are they quarantined yeah i’d be uh 24 students and a teacher and they’re quarantined and able to come back on monday september 14th their quarantine actually ends on friday the 11th so they’re uh able to go out that weekend but then they’ll be back in school the 14th well we’re gonna i guess see what happens in school districts around the region do you think this is kind of going to be a problem all year long oh yeah i would imagine i i mean we were able to we felt comfortable starting on our regular date of august 20th uh you know still the plexiglass and masks and have you know sanitizer on the building and i feel like we have a good plan in place but it’s uh kind of something you knew that was going to happen i think we’re we’re probably the first school in the area so we’re getting some media attention right now but certainly uh you know we already saw one in fargo yesterday and it was the bigger school districts open it’s going to be a kind of a ongoing problem for all school districts in the state how many kids in your k-12 there we have 608 students which is the biggest enrollment we’ve ever had so you know we feel good about having all these kids in there but we are uh uh you know we have uh limited space and and a lot of kids so uh typically that’s it that’s a good problem but uh now when we’re trying to keep them apart it’s definitely a challenge okay is that kind of the plan if one student or teacher in a class test positive the whole bunch is quarantined well no no i think for that that kindergarten class it was probably the right choice now um you know we need to emphasize uh again with our teachers of keeping those apart um i would imagine if it was uh you know seven through twelve great uh we’re able to space those out we have seating charts in our kids it’s just that there’s a better understanding at that age so it doesn’t necessarily shut down a whole class if there’s one member in there okay meaning you could do a little more contact tracing yeah it’s a little easier and we you know we have all our classes set up in pods and and uh so it’s it’s yeah the older they get out of it the easier that’s going to be for us to to manage that and contact trace okay all right well good luck with this and everybody else is everybody has to deal with this this year thanks for talking to me yep thank you