On a balmy August morning in Emanuel County in eastern Georgia, hundreds of children bounded off freshly cleaned school buses and out of their parents’ cars. They were greeted by the principal, teachers and staff at Swainsboro Middle School who hadn’t seen them in four months. Before allowing the children to enter, a longtime receptionist beamed a temperature gun at their foreheads and checked for violations of the public school’s strict dress code: mostly neutral colors, nothing tight and no shoulders exposed.
Masks were optional, and about half of the children wore them. So did the receptionist, but only sporadically, according to several teachers.
Within a couple of days, the receptionist was out sick. Another receptionist called in sick as well. Both had caught the coronavirus, according to social media posts. In the ensuing weeks, a wave of cases would rush through the building — an outbreak for which district leaders blamed the community rather than the lack of a mask mandate in the schools. At least nine middle school teachers would be infected, including four along a single hallway; one would spend four weeks on a ventilator, fighting for her life. More than 100 students were quarantined because of positive cases or exposure. Within the first two months of school, the county would have one of the highest proportions of school-age COVID-19 cases in the state.
“Not everything that could have been done or should have been done was being done in the school system to stop the spread,” said Dr. Cedric Porter, a local CONTINUE READING: Two School Districts Had Different Mask Policies. Only One Had a Teacher on a Ventilator. — ProPublica