COVID-19 was one topic of discussion at Wednesday’s Washington Community School Board meeting. In the superintendent update Willie Stone explained that they have been working on contingency plans just in case, but there’s no need for changes at this time, “We have fairly strict mitigation procedures at school. Everything is running fairly smoothly at school, in fact everything we’ve found has happened outside at weddings and stuff like that. We’re trying to be mindful of that, trying to remind our, especially remind our staff, we’ve said all along the thing that would put us into either going hybrid or going to continuous learning would be our staff, or actually … the lack of ability to provide education due to a lack of staff.” The district has required face coverings for students and staff since returning to classes in August.

On Tuesday, the district had one to five staff members absent due to COVID symptoms or a positive test. On Wednesday, the school district had nine students absent due to COVID symptoms or a positive test and 88 students were absent due to exposure and being in quarantine. There were 26 other students absent for other illnesses, bringing the district’s percent absent to 2.43%. The Washington County 14-day positivity rate for COVID-19 on Thursday was 16.7%.