Carroll HS goes online for two weeks due to COVID cases, quarantines

Credit: JEREMY P. KELLEY / STAFF

Credit: JEREMY P. KELLEY / STAFF

Carroll High School will move all students to remote learning for two weeks starting Monday in response to COVID-19 cases and quarantine issues.

Principal Matt Sableski said the school has four cases, and while no in-school spread has been found, contact tracing resulted in another 60-plus students having to quarantine for 14 days. With 80 other students already doing school online full-time, the 750-student Catholic school in Riverside decided to shift.

“You take all those numbers, and we said, we need to put everybody in the same (online) platform for two weeks,” Sableski said. “It’s certainly related to COVID, but more for an educational purpose than for virus reasons.”

Sableski said he’s confident that the school’s ongoing online classes, taught by Carroll teachers using Google Meet, have been going well.

“We just figured give it two weeks and everybody’s back from quarantine, hopefully things have settled out a little bit and we can come back and finish the semester,” he said. “I’m not naive enough to think this will be the last time we might have to do this, but if I can do two weeks out for every eight weeks in, I’ll consider that a success.”

Sableski said getting six feet of social distancing has definitely been the hardest part of in-person classes, but he said students have been cooperative on mask-wearing.

One big issue for Carroll going forward will be cold and flu season. Sableski said historically a lot of kids have come to school even if they’re sick because they don’t want to miss a day. But he said there has to be a culture change this year.

“That’s going to be the interesting thing going forward — all the kids who get sick, but don’t necessarily have COVID and how do you negotiate that?” Sableski said. “I know you think it’s just a cold, but you’re going to stay home for three days anyway because I’d rather have you out for three days than 25 kids out for two weeks.”

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