CLINTON TOWNSHIP, Mich. – On Tuesday, a local school district sent an entire grade level home because of exposure to one teacher.
Local 4 News has been following the Clintondale Community School District and was tipped off that the district is grappling with its first mass quarantine.
In a statement to Local 4 News, superintendent Roderick Broadnax confirmed the situation saying, ”COVID cases, unfortunately, interrupted campus life in the Clintondale Community School District this week. Among those affected are 104 eighth graders and one seventh grader at Clintondale Middle School who are quarantined because of an exposure to a single teacher who tested positive for COVID last week.”
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This is a small district with only five schools and about 1,600 students and 233 staffers.
Parent Tar-Tries Taylor had three children in the district last year in remote learning. One graduated and this year. She is concerned for the other two and whether remote learning will be put in place again.
You might remember this was a district we featured several weeks prior to the start of school because it had zero COVID mitigations during summer school and none planned for the start of school. After the story aired on Local 4 News the superintendent stepped up mitigations big time.
Within two weeks of our follow-up the district’s school board voted to rescind the mask mandate and indeed, Macomb County is the only county in the Tri-County area that does not mandate masks.
In a letter Broadnax sent to staffers Sunday, he indicates that contact tracing continues to make sure everyone in the school system who came in contact with the teacher is quarantined.
To date, only that one teacher has been side-lined. The 8th grade class remains in remote learning until Oct. 5.
In Macomb County each individual district can choose whether or not to have a mask mandate because the county’s health department has not issued a mandate for schools.
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