Covid-19's latest rise in Jefferson County interrupted normalcy in county business and at least one school district.
The Jefferson County Courthouse will remain closed through the end of this week "due to covid," County Judge Gerald Robinson said in a statement. This is the second week in a row the courthouse has been closed.
Covid was also blamed for the county road department closing for the rest of the week, as well.
"I am still receiving information from employees who have been exposed or have a relative at home who is exposed," Robinson said Tuesday afternoon. "When I was en route from the radio station, not yet 30 minutes later, I got a call from our tire recycling service [where] three out of five employees tested positive for covid. It is steadily increasing and running rampant."
Robinson said he was unsure how many employees across all departments had either tested positive or were exposed, but covid's impact on his employees made the decision to close the courthouse easy. Information on county services during the closure is available at jeffersoncountyar.gov.
"One of the things we have learned in the process is we have prepared to work remotely on some of our court cases," Robinson said. "We are set up to work remotely. What we've done is direct the public to go online to the appropriate office. Employees are still working from home, do emails and respond to phone calls. Those things have to be done. It does put a damper on the fact that people won't be face to face, but this decision provides a safe environment for employees and the citizens."
Jefferson County sheriff's office Maj. Gary McClain said he was not aware of the courthouse closure. The sheriff's office opened Tuesday morning.
"We currently have about 10 employees out across all of our divisions to my knowledge," McClain said. "Some of those are positive and recovering. Others are out due to family positives and/or direct exposure. We will assess the situation daily as to our office being open."
The sheriff's office had been closed since Friday because of a positive case within the force.
"We can't shut down law enforcement," McClain said. "We can't shut down detention. So many of our personnel are essential. If we get to a point where we don't have sufficient personnel, of course, we'll close. We'll assess it on a daily basis. If things get crazy, we'll close for a few days."
The omicron variant of coronavirus has led to a big spike in the cumulative number of positive cases across Arkansas this month, from 567,824 on Jan. 2 to 668,421 Monday.
Jefferson County has recorded 16,051 cumulative cases, including 13,579 recoveries and 242 deaths linked to covid-19 as of Tuesday. The active number of cases decreased from 2,332 Monday to 2,221 Tuesday.
The sharp rise in cases within Jefferson County's public schools may be even more alarming.
The Pine Bluff and White Hall school districts recorded 200 or more covid-19 infections per 10,000 people. The Pine Bluff School District had 58 active cases as of Jan. 13, an increase of 15 from three days earlier and double the number on Jan. 6. The White Hall School District had 49 active cases as of Jan. 13, more than double the number on Jan. 10 and almost quadruple the number on Jan. 6.
Students in Pine Bluff schools were asked to stay home for a fourth-straight school day -- Monday was the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday -- as teachers and staff members planned how to conduct on-campus learning today and Thursday while limiting transitions from one classroom to another. Students are asked to bring headphones and Chromebooks today.
"After [today], we have a plan where we've been talking with food services for here where we're actually going to deliver breakfast at 7:50 [a.m.]," Dollarway High and Robert F. Morehead Middle School Principal Leondra Williams said. "When students come, they'll just go straight to class, and we'll deliver their prepackaged meals to each wing."
Starting today, students will stay in their homeroom (first-period) classes for the day except to attend extracurricular classes like band, health and Junior ROTC, Williams said.
"Teachers, of course, will be teaching via Zoom and managing students in their class for that time period all day, logging on to their Zooms," she said. "Teachers are not teaching straight through. They're still going to get a conference period, and at the close of the day, when students go home at 3:15 p.m., teachers will get to have that collaborative team time when they're unpacking standards, lesson plans and things like that. The professional learning community process, they're working on that every day."
Pine Bluff School District acting Superintendent Melvin Bryant, taking over as Barbara Warren recovers from knee surgery, said the district was short-staffed on teachers across the district last week and reached a cap of infections per 1,000 students, which forced it to go into online learning.
"We felt it was best to give all the schools an opportunity to let [the covid cases] die down," Bryant said. "We thought if we went virtual for those days and we disinfected every building, it would give us an opportunity to chill the virus down."
The Watson Chapel School District had the most active cases among staffers and students in Jefferson County as of Jan. 13. Its 104 cases nearly doubled the count on Jan. 10 and was 61 more than on Jan. 6.
There were also between 100 and 199 more infections per 10,000 people who live in the district. Still, Superintendent Andrew Curry is determined to keep campuses open to take the burden off of working parents.
"We've got about $10 million from the federal government like other schools did to buy PPE [personal protective equipment] and other things to keep kids in school," Curry said. "The second thing, I'm a big believer that public schools should be open for the public. We've got parents to rely on jobs and don't have a place to bring their kids."
Curry added that he is working with his leadership team members, who tell him daily whether they can efficiently and safely conduct class or other school business before he makes a decision on whether to keep school open.
"Until we can't staff teachers, we're not going to close down," Curry said. "I think we're going to have to learn with this thing. I don't know if we can react like we did last time. How do parents keep going to work if they don't have a place to send their kids to school?"
Parents haven't called to complain about keeping school open amid the covid rise, Curry said, but they have about the risk of losing their jobs if they can't work to watch their children at home.
"I think the safest place for kids is in school instead of out on the streets," he said.
A lack of teachers forced the White Hall School District to pivot to alternate methods of instruction (AMI) for three days last week, but classes reopened Tuesday.
Superintendent Doug Dorris said if a campus has 25%-30% of students in one grade level either with covid or under quarantine, the classrooms for that grade level at that school would be shut down. That, however, would not count against the 10 AMI days each Arkansas school district is permitted to use, he said.
Thursday will begin the third week in a row when masks are required to be worn on White Hall campuses. Dorris required the masks after the combined number of covid cases and quarantines among students surpassed 30, which is about 1% of the district's student population.
"We do that every seven days," Dorris said of renewing the policy. "I think we'll have them on through the end of January."