600 Westminster Christian students went on a trip. COVID cases put classes back online.
High school students at a well-known Miami-Dade County private school have been attending class virtually for weeks because five of them, as well as one staff member, contracted COVID-19 during an annual retreat early last month.
Almost all of Westminster Christian School’s roughly 600 high school students attended the six-day retreat to Georgia the week of Aug. 16, the Palmetto Bay school’s second week of class. The first day of school at Westminster was Aug. 9.
About 25 students chose not to go, said Ana Poveda, the school’s director of communications and marketing. Also, everyone who went on the trip submitted a negative COVID-19 test result beforehand, Poveda said.
Nevertheless, six people ended up testing positive for the coronavirus when they returned, and the school decided that high school students would attend class virtually, through the school’s Westminster Connect program, until the end of next week’s Labor Day holiday.
“Westminster Connect, our live remote learning platform, is available to upper school students who are temporarily unable to come to campus due to illness or quarantine. We had six confirmed cases of COVID, one staff member and five students, during our annual high school retreat,” Poveda said in an email this week. “As a precautionary measure and to enable continuous learning while some students were on quarantine, we temporarily put high school students on Westminster Connect through the Labor Day holiday.”
It was not immediately known how the students were transported to the retreat, if they had to wear facial coverings en route or what the living arrangements were while in Georgia.
A video posted on YouTube of the 2019 retreat shows festive students riding rides at the Six Flags amusement park in Austell, Georgia, dancing and singing on a sprawling compound’s property, swimming and taking part in various outdoor activities like rafting and playing baseball.
In total, about 1,260 students attend Westminster’s elementary, middle and high schools. Elementary and middle schoolers have been back to in-person class since the beginning of the academic year, Poveda said.
“So far, we have had 17 full days of instruction without interruption. We are equipped and prepared to offer remote virtual teaching and learning as needed,” Poveda said. “Westminster is committed to in-person on-campus teaching and learning, accompanied by our full fine arts, athletics, and activities programming.”
Positive cases in South Florida public schools
Meanwhile, public school students in Monroe, Broward and Miami-Dade counties have been back to in-person learning since Aug. 11th, 18th and 23rd respectively.
Students and staff in Miami-Dade and Broward must wear facial coverings while inside school buildings. Monroe, the Florida Keys public school district, has a mask mandate of sorts, but it falls short of a true requirement because parents are allowed to opt their children out of the policy.
Since classes began in Broward County Public Schools, 418 students and 229 staff have tested positive for COVID-19, according to that district’s online dashboard.
The number of positive cases in Miami-Dade public schools since the first day of school is 63 students and 141 employees, according to its dashboard.
And, in the Keys, a total of 147 students and 23 staff have contracted COVID, according to the district’s website.
This story was originally published September 1, 2021 at 5:53 PM.
