LYNNFIELD — Following a week in which 35 new COVID-19 cases were reported—including seven cases in the schools—along with an incident in which a student reportedly contracted the virus after contact with an infected teacher, Lynnfield Public Schools are going fully remote through the end of the week.
The in-school transmission appears to have taken place at Lynnfield Middle School, which went remote Wednesday in response. The decision was made Wednesday afternoon to close the rest of the Lynnfield schools as well.
“We believe deeply in the need for our students to learn in-person to the fullest extent possible. To date, we have been able to continue with in-person learning in our hybrid plan because of the COVID-19 protocols we have put in place in our schools, and with the cooperation of our school families to follow those protocols,” wrote Superintendent Kristen Vogel in a press release Wednesday.
“However, during the past five days, we have (had) seven positive cases in our schools. And we are concerned about school transmission at the Lynnfield Middle School.”
Vogel hopes that the time away from school will allow them to “conduct thorough contact tracing and deep clean our school buildings.”
The 35 new cases in the past week, along with 41 the week before, brings the total number of active cases up to 123.
In the past month, there have been 162 new cases, more than double the amount that had been reported up to that point. According to the Fire Chief and Emergency Management Director, Glenn Davis, youth are particularly at-risk.
“The last couple weeks have been really heavy for us,” said Davis. “We’re definitely seeing a shift in ages. Early on in COVID, 60 and above were the biggest numbers but now we’re seeing most of our cases in the lower age groups.”
Of the 123 individuals with active cases of COVID-19, 46 of them are under the age of 29.
Despite these numbers, Lynnfield is still listed as a Yellow community according to the Mass. Department of Public Health. This is largely due to the new way in which communities are classified, under which Lynnfield would need a positivity rate of five percent to be considered a Red community. As of the most recent data, Lynnfield was at 4.09 percent positivity.
Davis was confident that in their current circumstances, they would have been considered a Red community under the old system of classification. “Absolutely,” he said. “Not even close, not even a question.”
Lynnfield Public Schools had another COVID-19 incident on Nov. 23 when Superintendent Kristen Vogel threatened to return to remote learning at the high school unless parents complied with safety protocols.
This came after a situation in which four high school students and their families failed to report to the school that they had come into close proximity with COVID positive individuals.
“This failure to inform us puts the public health of the high school community at risk and may cause us to pause in-person learning at the high school for a period of time,” said Vogel warned in a press release at the time.
Davis is worried that the COVID numbers might get worse before they get better.
“We’re still waiting to see what the numbers do after Thanksgiving—we know a lot of people got together for Thanksgiving and that’s going to spike our cases.”
It remains unclear when Lynnfield will return to in-person learning.
“We will continue to closely monitor this situation with input from DESE, the Emergency Management Team, the Board of Health, and our Leadership Team,” said Vogel.
At an emergency School Committee meeting at 7 p.m. Wednesday, School Committee chair Jamie Hayman said, “this is the consequence for not following the rules. We still hope to get to in-person in the hybrid model on Monday, and Tuesday for the middle school now that we have an emergency mobile testing unit, and are still hoping to have full-time learning in late winter/early spring.
