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The Woodstown-Pilesgrove Regional School District will begin the school year with virtual classrooms only, after a pair of high school athletes test positive for the coronavirus, district officials said.
Woodstown-Pilesgrove is the first sparsely populated Salem County district to announce that it will not offer in-person classes at the start of the school year as a precaution against the virus, according to a database of 2020-2021 school openings maintained by NJ. Advance Media.
“Despite extensive planning leading up to the reopening of our school and important precautions taken by our coaches and athletes, we have two student-athletes who are COVID positive with several COVID test results pending,” wrote the Superintendent of Schools of the district, Virginia Grossman, in a letter Friday to the Woodstown-Pilesgrove school community.
“Reluctantly,” Grossman added, “I have to admit that I cannot guarantee the safety of our school community with a hybrid in-person reopening at this time. The health and safety of all members of our school community improves dramatically by moving to a temporary, fully virtual and distance learning initiation during the first six weeks of the school year. “
Grossman has left open the possibility that the district will begin offering partial in-person instruction from October 19, based on a recommendation to be presented to the Board of Education at its September 24 meeting, based on ” a review of the circumstances by the School Pandemic Intervention Committee and the administrative team.
Grossman’s letter did not identify the students or their sport, nor did it indicate whether fall sports will be played this year. Fall sports at Woodstown High School include football, soccer, and field hockey,
School board president Eileen Miller addressed questions to Grossman, who did not respond to requests for comment. Woodstown High School athletic director Joseph Ursino and other officials also did not respond.
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The announcement that two of the players had tested positive came a day after the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA), the state’s high school sports governing body, announced Thursday that fall sports would be contested this year. Despite this, several school districts, including some in South Jersey, have decided to cancel their fall seasons.
Woodstown-Pilesgrove is not the first district to report that a student-athlete has tested positive this preseason. In Atlantic County, Pleasantville School District officials announced Tuesday evening that a student-athlete had tested positive for COVID-19 after participating in two weeks of practice on campus. People in contact with the student have been asked to self-quarantine. The district held a special meeting on Tuesday evening to seek a shift to fully distance learning.
Woodstown-Pilesgrove is a pre-K-to-12 regional district that serves a total of approximately 1,700 students from the Borough of Woodstown and Township of Pilesgrove, as well as the townships of Alloway, Upper Pittsgrove and Oldmans, who send students to high school.
Officially, Salem County recorded a total of 982 COVID-19 cases on Saturday, resulting in 82 deaths. That’s over 189,236 cases and 14,114 deaths for all of New Jersey. The largely rural county accounted for 0.5% of the state’s confirmed cases and 0.06% of deaths.
The county’s coronavirus figures are consistent with its relatively small, low-density population. With around 62,385 residents in 2019, Salem is the least populated of New Jersey’s 21 counties, accounting for just 0.07% of the state’s population of 8.8 million.
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