Five Hamilton County schools will shift to remote learning next week because of rising COVID-19 cases, as the delta variant surges across the district and especially on campuses with a high percentage of parents opting out of the district’s mask requirement for their children.
Sale Creek Middle/High School, East Hamilton Middle School and Ooltewah High School will shift to remote learning all of next week, while Daisy Elementary School and Alpine Crest Elementary School will move to remote learning Monday and Tuesday.
Wednesday will be a remote learning day districtwide and was already listed as such on the district calendar before Friday’s announcement for the five schools.
“Although current state law does not permit the entire school district to shift to remote learning outside of a declared emergency, we have recently interpreted state board policies, rules and regulations that allow for the limited use of remote learning for individual schools on a case by case basis,” school officials said in a statement.
Of the 44,000 students in Hamilton County Schools, about 500 of them have an active COVID-19 case. When factoring in close contacts of those students, about 4,000 students districtwide are in quarantine.