Gardner gives COVID-19 update

On the day before Thanksgiving, Blake Gardner, superintendent for the Hill City School District, released a video addressing COVID-19 numbers in the school district.

His address focused on both active and total cases as well as a survey that was sent out by the school district.

“One thing I’ve tried to do: over the last three weeks send out a COVID dashboard just to make sure everyone is on the same page and there are no rumors going around that we’re either having an outbreak or vice versa — that there’s no cases,” he said. “I just want to make sure the information out there is accurate and we all know it. These are the active cases as of (Nov. 25).”

As of Nov. 25, there was one active case of COVID-19 in the elementary school while two staff members actively had the virus. As of Nov. 25, there were no active cases in either the middle or high school. There were zero people in quarantine due to close contact.

That, Gardner said, equates to 99.5 of the school actively not having COVID-19 as of Nov. 25.

In total for the 15 weeks school has been in session, as of Nov. 25 there have been five cases of COVID-19 at the elementary school, zero in the middle school, 12 at the high school and six staff members.

Just over four percent of the entire school population has had the virus at some point during the school year and recovered while 95.9 percent of people within the district have not had the virus as of Nov. 25.

“We have been lucky in the sense that, while we may have had a few cases, they are confined to building levels,” Gardner said. “We may have five at a time in the high school, but at that same time we wouldn’t have any at the middle school and maybe no active cases at the elementary. So, it has been really isolated and easier for us as a staff to handle from that standpoint.”

If someone tests positive for COVID-19, they remain an active case on the school dashboard for 10 days due to a South Dakota Department of Health mandate of a 10 day isolation, Gardner said.

The current active cases as of Nov. 25 were cases of people who are within that 10 day isolation period.

For the percentages of the school population that Gardner reports has either had or not had the virus, he said he derives that number based on 560 students and staff.

“I take our K-12 student enrollment plus our staff members, and staff includes teachers, paras, janitors, kitchen staff, administration, just anyone who is employed by the district,” he said. “Just so you guys know that is how we come up with that number.”

As for the survey released, Gardner reported that, overall, the stakeholders in the district were pleased with how the district has been handling COVID-19.

For an average, Gardner said stakeholders felt the year overall had been a 8.3 out of 10.

In total, 95.5 percent of those surveyed felt that communication was either OK or good. The 4.5 percent who said communication needed to improve cited the need for more updates.

With regard to masks, 60 percent of respondents believed masks should be optional, 32 percent believed they should be mandatory and eight percent believed there should be no masks.