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On Monday, Chambers County Schools Superintendent Dr. Kelli Hodge announced that CCSD was giving parents the option of attending school traditionally or online.

“Over the weekend, we had so many more kids that needed to be quarantined because people just aren’t following the rules. That also quarantines more employees,” CCSD Superintendent Dr. Kelli Hodge said. “We’re giving people the choice, so everyone’s Christmas isn’t ruined and while the numbers are high, just letting parents make that choice of what is best for their child right now.”

The CCSD reported that 139 students were in quarantine on Friday.

Since Saturday, more than 100 additional students were also quarantined. This is the first time that the CCSD has been forced to quarantine more than 200 students.

“We got notified of a positive on Saturday,” Hodge said. “From then, the principal and nurse from the school started working over the weekend … Most of these were identified yesterday, and we were able to contact [them], but this morning we were notified [Monday] of a couple of other positives.”

Over the weekend, Chambers County eclipsed the 2,000 positive case mark with 57 deaths since the pandemic crossed our county line. As of this writing, there have been 227 cases of COVID-19 in Chambers County over the past 14 days.

Anything the school system can do to keep COVID-19 out of our schools is welcomed until the current surge is over. Hopefully, these measures will prevent a new surge from occurring.

While no one passed out handbooks on how to navigate through a pandemic to any school system, we applaud those leaders that thought long and hard about keeping our children safe while ensuring they would still receive the education they deserve.