Hundreds Of Palm Beach County School Kids Quarantined Over COVID Concerns

Medical check up and treatment concept. Mother is measure the temperature of little Asian kid girl. Sick child with fever and illness in bed.

Photo: Moment RF

Palm Beach County's schools superintendent blames Governor Ron DeSantis for the need to send 440 students into quarantine because of COVID-19, after only two days of in-person classes.

"The governor's got to take responsibility for establishing the ground rules we're operating under. And this ability for families to opt out is leading to more cases, which is ultimately going to send more kids home and deprive them of that classroom experience."

Speaking on MSNBC Thursday, Michael Burke said that 37 students and 14 employees have confirmed cases of the coronavirus.

Palm Beach has a mask mandate for students and staff, but under state rules kids can opt out with parental consent. The superintendent implores the governor to change that.

"I Think if we really are committed to keeping kids in school, we should reassess the situation."

He told the reporter that while schools are doing "everything else we can to mitigate the threat" he suspects that "things are gonna grow somewhat exponentially."

Burke says about 5,700 students have opted out of wearing masks, which amounts to just over 3 percent of the more than 178,000 kids in public schools.

The school year just started on Tuesday, and it's unknown if the infections were caught on campus. According to the CDC, the incubation period for COVID-19 is 2 to 14 days and rarely do symptoms appear as soon as two days after exposure.

Burke did not say how many, if any, of the kids who have tested positive were among those who opted out.

During the interview, he also expressed concerns that school administrators could not keep masked and unmasked students separated.

"Part of the state emergency rule is that we're not allowed to isolate students if they choose to exercise that choice to opt out. So we're not allowed to, you know, partition off individual classrooms. We're not allowed to tell students where to sit on the bus."

Students sent home to quarantine will be provided with "make-up work in a timely manner."

There have been 76 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in St. Lucie County public schools since the academic year began on Tuesday. 66 of those are students. Martin County Schools, which reopened to students on Wednesday, had three confirmed cases of the virus on the first day of school.


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