CHEROKEE COUNTY, Ga. — One metro Atlanta county has announced the closure of half of its high schools due to an increase in COVID-19 cases at each.
The Cherokee County School District announced on Saturday that Woodstock, Sequoyah and River Ridge high schools will be closed to in-person learning for the remainder of the year due to its own containment measures and the upcoming winter break.
The school district provided a basic breakdown of cases and quarantines at each school over a two week period to show why they were taking the action.
In that time, officials said student and staff cases had increased to 27 at Woodstock High School with 476 of the school's 1,555 in-person learning students in quarantine.
River Ridge has reported a total of 29 students and staff testing positive for COVID with 285 of its 1,471 in-person learning students under quarantine.
And Sequoyah High School reported 23 cases with 365 of its 1,708 in-person learning students in quarantine.
The school system said that in-person students will now shift to a virtual learning plan with online final exams beginning on Tuesday.
"We understand these closings create hardships and are disappointing to students and their families, but these are necessary measures to avoid potential spread within our schools," the school district said in a message online. "The number of COVID-19 cases across the country and our community continues to rise, and the surge is leading to higher case and quarantine rates among our students and staff and affecting our ability to keep schools open "
The school district had already scheduled closure to students for winter break from Dec. 19 to Jan. 4. Because schools will be polling sites for the Jan. U.S. Senate runoffs, classes had already been scheduled as a digital learning day for Jan. 5. That means students signed up for in-person learning won't return until Jan. 6.
As the school district announced the decision, it also pointed to a message from Superintendent Brian Hightower at a recent school board meeting where he suggested wearing masks when not socially distant should be expected in school - and not just encouraged.
As of Saturday afternoon, there have been a total of 471,734 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Georgia with 9,204 deaths since the pandemic began. Currently, 2,824 people are hospitalized with COVID-19.
The state also reached a record number of new cases in a day on Thursday with 6,062 and the state has seen elevated numbers over the last week. However, the same days also tend to show a marked increase in testing as well.