COVID-19 Count Continues To Climb At Fremont-Mills

An outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus within the Fremont-Mills Community School District will keep students in remote learning through at least this week, Superintendent Dave Gute said Monday.

Fremont-Mills, which first announced on Sept. 20 it had nine confirmed cases among its students, announced Friday that an additional nine cases have been confirmed in the district. The new cases include exposures in the elementary area of the building as well as the middle school and high school. An unspecified number of staff are also among the confirmed cases.

The district’s 465 students have been in remote learning since Sept. 21.

With more than 100 students either sick or quarantined in the secondary school alone and Fremont county’s positivity rate exceeding 17 percent in its two-week rolling average, the district sought approval on Thursday from the Iowa Department of Education to pivot to a remote learning platform.

“Last week we did not need approval because it was considered a ‘hybrid’ week and this week I felt like we did (need approval),” Gute said.

Any instruction not in buildings above 50 percent in a two week period would not count as learning days, according to Gov. Kim Reynolds’ return to learn proclamation issued this summer.

On Sunday, the district received approval to continue remote learning for up to two weeks.

Just how long the district stays there remains a question, but Gute is targeting an Oct. 5 return to face-to-face learning.

“We’re trying to have school Monday, provided our numbers straighten out and  we can do that and get back in school safely,” Gute said.

While the school is shuttered, all activities and all sports are suspended and the campus is effectively closed through at least Oct. 4. The district’s preschool and the community workout facility will also remain closed.

The source of the outbreak has not yet been determined.

“We’ve done some looking and we’re looking at if some products work better than others on disinfecting but there’s really no rhyme or reason why some kids got it and others didn’t,” he said. “We’re struggling to understand of the variety of who got it. We assume it was spread somewhere in the building but we can’t really figure out how it necessarily happened.”

An extra custodian was hired last week to assist with a deep cleaning of the entire building.

The district is coordinating its response with Fremont County Public Health and following all Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.

The outbreak has been particularly frustrating, Gute said, because he feels students and staff have been diligent with health protocols since school opened in August.

“A lot of the cases look like they’re tracing back to the week before so we’re hoping  we will have a very low number of cases this week and we’ll be good to go Oct. 5,” he said. “That being said, if we do have additional positive cases, they won’t have been at school and hopefully they’re all following the things we’re asking them to do with quarantining and we can have the majority of them back Monday.”