ROME, Ga. (AP) - A northwest Georgia school system is sending all its students home to take classes virtually for 10 days because of coronavirus infections and quarantines.
The Rome school system said Tuesday that with more than 600 students, faculty and staff members isolated with infections or quarantined because of exposure, the district of 6,400 students will switch to all-online instruction Wednesday through Nov. 6, assuming cases have declined by then.
Rome and surrounding Floyd County are among Georgia's high transmission areas as infections and hospitalizations for COVID-19 rise for a third time.
Athletics and extracurricular activities will continue. Students are being sent home with three days' worth of meals, and parents can pick up meals for next week. Officials say they will clean affected areas meanwhile.
Superintendents have said quarantine rules are making in-person learning difficult to sustain. But Gov. Brian Kemp has refused their request to have teachers declared "critical infrastructure workers," which would allow superintendents to order exposed teachers to keep providing face-to-face instruction, as long as they wear masks and don't show symptoms of the respiratory illness.
Georgia's Department of Public Health countermanded a move by Bulloch County schools this month to change quarantine rules to allow exposed students to avoid the quarantines that have kept nearly 1,000 students and employees in that 11,000-student district out of class at various times.
The Statesboro Herald reported that district leaders said exposed students could return as long as they're asymptomatic and masked. But Public Health Commissioner Kathleen Toomey told the district to rescind the move days later, calling it "out of compliance." She noted that violating the department's standing quarantine order is a misdemeanor under state law.