More than 500 St. Johns County students have COVID, district reports

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St. Johns County, Clay County schoolhouse districts grapple with staffing issues, national leaders say

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The Friday variation of the St. Johns County School District’s COVID-19 study showed 515 students were confirmed affirmative cases of the coronavirus and 161 were quarantined.

The aforesaid study showed 122 unit members tested affirmative and 22 others were quarantined.

The numbers aren’t debilitatingly high, nor are they the highest the territory has seen during the yearslong pandemic, but St. Johns Education Association president Michelle Dillon said the district’s teachers are inactive exhausting themselves with the workload.

“We bash inactive tally into a substitute shortage,” Dillon said. “Everybody’s pitching successful teachers are covering different classes. It has not been the instrumentality to mean that immoderate of america had hoped for.”

Dillon added that the association’s apical priority, 2nd lone to safety, is the acquisition continuity successful the schoolroom and minimizing the disturbance to children’s education. However, she emphasized the value of patience and knowing from families during a turbulent time.

“They tin assistance by having the utmost patience, not lone with our teachers but with our enactment staff, our paraprofessionals, our secretaries, custodians and autobus drivers,” Dillon said. “We’re each successful this together.”

In Clay County, the district’s acquisition national president said unit and administrators are banking connected the omicron variant’s abbreviated life.

“It’s truly rough,” said Clay County Education Association president Vicki Kidwell. “Kids and teachers are already stressed. I deliberation they’re conscionable holding it together, conscionable hoping it passes rapidly due to the fact that determination isn’t truly a plan.”

Kidwell said she is often getting calls astir staffers investigating affirmative for COVID-19, who past person to beryllium isolated and temporarily replaced successful their classroom.

“It’s not truly optimal learning, obviously,” Kidwell said. “In galore cases, there’s precise small acquisition going connected due to the fact that you just, you don’t cognize who’s going to beryllium successful the classroom.”

Many experts judge the omicron variant, which is the ascendant strain successful the United States, volition not linger long, arsenic information indicates the fast-moving variant has already peaked successful galore places.