Coffee County Schools director Dr. Charles Lawson issued a press release Wednesday afternoon to offer clarity as to why Coffee County Middle School and North Coffee Elementary School has been closed for the remainder of the week – a move that was announced Tuesday afternoon.
Lawson explained that the closures were not due to a COVID-19 outbreak, but instead because of concerns about possible and tests that were not finalized. The full release is below:
“ The decision to close these two schools was made because Coffee County Schools did not want to bring students into an area in which we could not guarantee minimum risk of exposure to COVID-19. The closure will allow test results to be finalized, extra disinfection to occur, and staffing decisions to be made. No school will be opened in which there is concern that we cannot protect our students.
“The most significant difficulty in both situations is not the active cases that have been identified. The challenge is the fact that several other staff members have been identified as potentially exposed and must quarantine for two weeks. The district is making adjustments in staffing assignments in order to provide an appropriate learning environment for all students.
“Please understand that the school district has not identified any type of significant spread of COVID-19 in the schools and our staff are hard at work in all buildings in the district.. As stated previously, the closures are a result of an abundance of caution to protect our students. Further information on how each school will reopen will be available later this week. This decision will be determined by the preparations that are currently being performed as well as the change in the number of active cases of COVID-19 in Coffee County.”
