Plan B: District moves to limit CHS COVID-19 outbreak

Classes will be much different for many Cameron High School students after district officials announced implementation of Plan B.

As part of a four-tier collaborative plan with the Clinton County Health Department to fight COVID-19, Cameron R-1 School District announced it will enter Plan B - splitting the CHS student body in order to limit the impact of a recent outbreak. 

“We had been having really good numbers until [Sept. 21], then we started seeing a pretty large increase in the amount of cases at our high school,” superintendent Matt Robinson said. “We pretty much had zero cases going into Monday. As of the end of the week, we have about five or six cases that are confirmed. With the high school being set up to where we can’t cohort, we knew some problems could exist and it could spread quickly.”

After announcing CHS’ first confirmed COVID-19 case Sept. 21, sending 20 students home as a precaution, additional announcements from the school district soon followed. A day later, Matt Wenck, CHS athletics co-director, announced the volleyball team would not return to the court until Oct. 3 due to COVID-19 quarantines. Nearly half of the starting lineup for the football team was not on the sideline for last Friday’s game against Maryville. 

“One kid can take out 20 or 30 people if they’re involved in an activity or sitting too close to somebody, then all of a sudden that close contact becomes a go-home quarantine,” Robinson said. “While I wouldn’t say our cases are extremely high. Six cases out of more than 400 kids going to the high school regularly every day. It really came down to the quarantine numbers and we had a lot of kids get quarantined. We had to shift our education anyways so we went ahead and made that switch.”

As part of Plan B the district will split the high school student body into two groups, Group A and Group B, which the district would determine based on alphabetical order. While Group A - students with last names starting from A to L - attends class Tuesdays and Thursdays, Group B - students M to Z - attends class Wednesdays and Fridays. All CHS students will attend class online Mondays. All other Cameron R-1 School District students will attend class as normal. Plan C splits students from all schools into two groups and Plan D is a complete shutdown. While announcing the first COVID-19 infection last Monday Laurie Medford, assistant superintendent, said there is not a fixed number or rate for if the district would return to class as normal or shift to Plan C or D.

Since the start of school, each of the four counties encompassing the Cameron R-1 School District saw a dramatic increase in confirmed COVID-19 cases. Monday, Clinton County reported it reached 241 confirmed cases, up 80 in three weeks. DeKalb County saw a 53-case increase in that same time period with 134 total, Caldwell County nearly doubled in that same time with 95 cases while Daviess County doubled with 117 cases.

“That’s all going to depend on the numbers. Right now, not only in Clinton County or Cameron, effectively everywhere the numbers are on the rise dramatically,” Robinson said. “While we didn’t have the best week at the high school, we’re still a lot better than other places. We speak with Clinton County Health Department officials daily. They’ve had a rough week. A huge increase in cases. Ours, while it seems big, pales in the numbers they’re starting to see.”