GUILDERLAND — All but one of Guilderland’s seven schools has now had a case of COVID-19 this school year as 12 new cases were announced this week — seven of them were announced Wednesday evening. Only Pine Bush Elementary School as yet remains untouched.

“These are now fast and furious,” said Superintendent Marie Wiles on Wednesday afternoon as she prepared another email to be sent to “GCSD Families” about the latest positive test results.

She explained that the district waits to report the new cases until it gets confirmation from the very busy county health department.

A large number of the new cases, Wiles said, did not involve quarantines because of people not being in school for the Thanksgiving holiday. “We dodged several bullets,” she said.

The most recent case, according to the state’s COVID-19 Report Card, is at Altamont Elementary School where, the dashboard says, a student tested positive on Tuesday, Dec. 1. Altamont was the first of the district’s schools this fall to have to deal with COVID-19 cases; two students had tested positive in September.

Altogether, the Guilderland Central School District has had 22 cases so far this school year, according to the state’s dashboard as of Wednesday evening at press time. That did not include six of the new cases Wiles announced in her 5:30 p.m. email on Wednesday. Only the new Altamont Elementary case was listed yet on the state tracker.

The other six new cases all involve Guilderland High School. Two of them, both confirmed by the county’s health department, were not in school during the time they were infectious.

The other four high school cases are pending confirmation. Three of them were not in school while they were infectious. For the fourth, Wiles wrote, the high school principal, Michael Piscitelli, has been given guidance from the health department on who needs to quarantine and has informed those people.

Earlier in the week, the district learned on Friday, Nov. 27 of a case at Lynnwood Elementary School, followed by a second case there, announced on Saturday. The state dashboard says both of those cases were of students; the district does not identify whether the positive tests were of students, staff, or teachers.

Also on Saturday, the district announced the first case at Guilderland Elementary School. That case, because of quarantine requirements, caused a staffing shortage at the school, Wiles wrote, so kindergartners through fourth-graders moved to remote learning on Monday. Their in-person classes are to resume on Wednesday, Dec. 9.

The state’s dashboard identifies the positive case at Guilderland Elementary as an off-site teacher.

On Monday, the district announced the first COVID-19 case at Westmere Elementary School, and a fourth case at Farnsworth Middle School. According to the state’s dashboard, the Westmere case was of a staff member and the Farnsworth case was of a student. In-person instruction continues at both schools.

Altogether, Farnsworth has had two students, one teacher, and one staff member who tested positive, the state’s dashboard says.

Guilderland High School, according to the state’s dashboard, has suffered the most exposure to the disease with a total of 11 positives since the start of the school year — three of staff members and eight of students; one of the students was an off-site learner. This tally does not include the six new high school cases that Wiles announced on Wednesday evening.

The high school had been on a hybrid schedule with some in-person and some remote classes. The high school had moved to all-remote learning from Nov. 19 until Thanksgiving break. The original high school schedule resumed on Monday, Wiles told The Enterprise, adding, “It’s back to normal.”

The big picture

Wiles sent an email around 4 p.m. on Wednesday evening letting school district residents know that the area is not currently in a state-designated micro-cluster zone meant to contain outbreaks of COVID-19 — originally red, the most severe, followed by warning orange and precautionary yellow zones.

  “But as COVID-19 infection rates increase in our area, we are likely to be there soon,” Wiles wrote. “I want you to know that our goal is to stay open for in-person learning as long as it is safe and permitted by the state and the Department of Health.”

Throughout the week, Governor Andrew Cuomo has said repeatedly in calls and conferences with reporters that the goal going forward is to keep schools safe and open. According to the state’s new winter plan, as long as a school’s infection rate remains under the rate of the community at large, the school should stay open for in-person learning.

The winter plan focuses on keeping schools open that serve kindergartners through eighth-graders as well as schools that serve special-education students, and the new plan will outline required school testing for each micro-cluster level. 

Schools in orange zones will need to test 20 percent of their students and staff over the course of a month, and schools in red zones will need to test 30 percent. Originally, schools in yellow zones had to test 20 percent of students and staff weekly and local districts were preparing for this.

“If we are deemed to be in one of these zones, the state will require we test a specified percentage of all in-person students and staff for COVID-19 over a given period of time,” Wiles wrote in her Wednesday evening email. “The option to stay open will depend on if we obtain enough voluntary consent for testing, and how our school community’s test results compare to the overall population.”

Wiles said that the district is working with the Capital Region Board of Cooperative Educational Services and with the county’s health department to prepare a testing plan that will meet the state’s requirements.

“We will be asking all staff and families to consider consenting to a minimally invasive, rapid COVID-19 test,” Wiles said. “We will share more details about the testing and consent process very soon.”

She concluded, “While this is yet another challenge for our school community, we are committed to keeping our schools open for in-person instruction, so long as we can do so safely, if we are designated a micro-cluster zone. Working together, I am confident that we can get through this new challenge. Thank you so much for your ongoing support, patience, and flexibility so far this school year.  It is greatly appreciated!”

In a press conference on Friday morning, Albany County’s health commissioner, Elizabeth Whalen, urged parents, “Work with your kids.” Parents need to reinforce for their children the importance of keeping a distance, not gathering in groups, hand-washing, and mask-wearing.

“It’s not an easy time for kids,” said Whalen.

As Albany County, like the rest of the nation, is experiencing a surge in COVID-19 cases, Whalen said earlier that about 15 percent of the county’s COVID-19 cases in the last two months had come from students in kindergarten through 12th grade.

Whalen urged parents to keep their children home when they are sick and to get them tested. 

This month, Albany County launched two testing sites — one of them in Voorheesville — where students with symptoms like coughing and running a fever, who are therefore excluded from classes, can get tested for COVID-19. Appointments are coordinated through school nurses.