Marion County Schools closing Thursday through next week due to high COVID-19 cases

Sports, extracurricular activities also suspended

Coronavirus clean tile / Photo courtesy of Getty Images
Coronavirus clean tile / Photo courtesy of Getty Images

Marion County Schools will close starting Thursday and continuing through Sept. 10 for deep cleaning due to high COVID-19 case numbers, according to a Wednesday morning post on the district's Facebook page.

The district, which consists of nine schools, will use six stockpile days - set aside for snow days or other emergencies - and will not conduct any virtual instruction while closed, according to responses to comments from the district.

All extracurricular activities during that time are also suspended.

"After meeting with medical experts we have decided that the safest steps for our students and faculty members would be to close schools for extensive cleaning and hopefully to allow the number of cases to level off," said Marion County Schools Superintendent Mark Griffith. "We have been averaging between 150-160 active cases among our nine schools (faculty and students combined) and there have been three people in our county who have died in the past 24 hours.

"There is a lot of concern for how we can get things back under control and our top priority is always the health and safety of our students and faculty, so we felt like this was the wisest decision at this time. We will continue to monitor the situation and all options, including virtual learning, will be discussed for the future."

Among the activities that will either be rescheduled or canceled due to the closure are all football games involving the county's three high schools. The Tyner at Marion County Region 3-2A game set for this Friday has been rescheduled for Oct. 8, which was the first available open date on both teams' schedule. Marion County already had a scheduled open date next week.

The Copper Basin at Whitwell Region 3-1A game, which was to be played this week, was moved to Oct. 22, with both teams canceling nonregion games that had been scheduled for that date. Whitwell's game against Mt. Pleasant next week will not be made up.

The Lookout Valley at South Pittsburg game, which was scheduled for this week, had already been canceled due to COVID-19 protocol within the Lookout Valley program. However, both teams are now looking at a possible rescheduling date to make up that game because it is a Region 3-1A contest. If the game is not made up, according to TSSAA protocol, it would go down as a no-contest with neither team receiving a league win or loss. South Pittsburg's game at Murphy (North Carolina) next week will not be made up, meaning the Pirates will go four weeks between games for reasons related to COVID-19.

Last week, the Tennessee Department of Education sent a letter to school directors announcing waiver applications will be accepted for individual schools and classrooms affected by COVID-19 to shift to remote learning. However, the department does not allow entire districts to move to virtual learning, leaving districts to use the inclement weather days, during which no instruction is provided.

- Compiled by Anika Chaturvedi and Stephen Hargis

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