In the past week, Rondout, Ellenville and Pine Bush school districts released a number of COVID case announcements. However, the schools suspect that many of these cases are contracted off school grounds.

Between September 27 and October 1, the Ellenville Central School District reported three cases among students at the elementary school.

For that same time period last week, Pine Bush reported two positive cases among students at the high school, one at Circleville Middle School and another at Circleville Elementary. Pine Bush said both Circleville cases were members of the same family. On September 27, the school district also reported two positive cases at Pakanasink Elementary School and another positive case at the high school, but the school said it first learned about those cases the Friday prior, September 24.

Rondout Superintendent Joseph Morgan on Friday noted that the school will begin posting a daily COVID report on its home page, rather than issuing separate announcement for each COVID case within the district. He also issued a plea to parents to fill out the daily COVID symptom form, after several students came to class while exhibiting COVID symptoms.

“Now that we are back to school, I want to remind everyone to complete the daily health screening form. Over the past couple of weeks we have had incidents of students attending school with COVID symptoms, and as a result we were required to quarantine many students. Quarantining students is disruptive to their education, but we are required to quarantine close contacts of those who test positive for COVID,” said Morgan. “Please help us keep students in school by completing the daily health screening form and keep your child home if they are exhibiting COVID symptoms […] Beginning on Monday, October 4, we will post a screenshot of our daily reported cases of COVID in the District. The link to this screenshot will be located on the homepage of our District website under the embedded Twitter feed.”

On Monday, Rondout’s Daily COVID Report showed five positive cases at the intermediate school, three cases at the high school, and one at Marbletown Elementary.