Faced with a spike in coronavirus cases, Freedom High School will pivot to virtual learning on Friday.
About 10 cases of COVID-19 have been reported in recent days at Freedom, although none of the cases are related, so it doesn’t appear to be connected to the virus spreading in school, Bethlehem Area School District Superintendent Joseph Roy said in a video update.
“It’s kind of a preemptive closure,” Roy said.
High school students are already scheduled to take the state Keystone Exams next week, resulting in a modified schedule with students learning remotely Monday and Tuesday, he said. A limited number of students will be in the buildings the rest of the week for Keystone testing.
This pause will hopefully give Freedom a chance to get the rising cases under control and allow the district to complete contact tracing, Roy said.
Roy noted the decision also complies with new Pennsylvania Department of Education coronavirus health and safety guidelines. The rules trigger automatic building closures when recent cases hit specified levels.
Bethlehem returned to its hybrid model of instruction Jan. 11 after switching to all virtual before and after the holidays due to spiking case numbers. The district said it became too hard to contact trace all the cases.
Currently, the district’s COVID-19 dashboard shows 29 cases over the last two weeks. This breaks down to six elementary cases — including four at just Governor Wolf; three in the middle schools and five cases at Liberty and seven at Freedom. (The dashboard sometimes lags behind Roy’s official case count.) Then there are four eClassroom students, who learn completely online, and three district operations staff members.
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Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com.
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January 22, 2021 at 12:06PM
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