TOOELE — Tooele High School will shift to online learning for two weeks after the school reached 15 cases of COVID-19 on Thursday.
The two-week pivot starts Friday and students will return to the school on Oct. 26. Fall break is next week so students will only miss 6.5 face-to-face instructional days, but will have a total of 7.5 days of remote learning.
“This online schedule is NOT intended to be two weeks off of school. It is two weeks of online instruction that will allow our school/community to reset and allow all those students that are impacted by the virus to recover,” a note to parents sent Thursday states.
According to the district’s website, there have been 55 cases of COVID-19 associated with the school since the start of the academic year with 32 considered “current” cases.
The end of the quarter is Oct. 28 and there will be no automatic passing grade for online learning, the letter states. “Students and teachers will need to work together to achieve proficiency, progress and earn passing grades,” it says.
According to the school district’s case tracker, which is updated each day at 5 p.m., there are 15 active cases associated with the school while 285 people are on quarantine.
All extracurricular activities including performing arts, in-season athletics, and other scheduled competitions will continue.
School breakfast and lunch will be provided for students utilizing grab-and-go curbside pickup in front of the high school between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m.
According to the Utah Department of Health, there have been 3,315 reported school-associated cases of COVID-19 statewide since the start of the 2020-21 school year, with 1,258 in the past two weeks. About 73% of the cases have been among students.
School-associated cases are defined as confirmed cases among people who have attended, worked in or visited a K-12 school in person for more than 15 minutes while symptomatic or within 14 days of their symptom onset. It does not necessarily mean the individual contracted COVID-19 from being exposed to the virus while at school.
Under state guidelines, when a school reaches the threshold of more than 15 cases within a two-week period, health officials recommend that the school shift to online learning and suspend activities. Some schools have established their own thresholds or have allowed school activities to continue when instruction has been moved online.