Over 200 New Trier Students In COVID-19 Isolation Or Quarantine

WINNETKA, IL — A recent surge in new coronavirus cases among students at New Trier High School has pushed the COVID-19 infection and test positivity rate in New Trier Township above the regional average, administrators said. Many of the cases have been traced to off-campus student gatherings held over the final weekend of last month.

"While most of Illinois has gone down," Superintendent Paul Sally said Monday at a board committee meeting, "we’re seeing this spike in our small area, and I think the cases that we’re seeing are creating that increase in our area in the positivity rate."

As of Thursday, there were 48 New Trier students with active COVID-19 infections, according to data from the district. Another 152 students and 11 staff members have been quarantined for two weeks due to close contact with a confirmed case.

Sally said administrators are spending seven days a week tracing new infections and managing quarantines to allow New Trier to remain open using a hybrid learning model that allows half of students who opt into part-time on-campus instruction in the school building at a time. He suggested many recent cases can be traced back to weekend parties.

"When we have this number of situations, we have to take time to make sure we know what the sources are, and we’re able to track them down and make sure that we’re keeping the building safe. So a lot of work has gone into that over the last week," Sally said. "We certainly know there have been a couple of large gatherings that happened [the weekend of Jan. 30 and Jan. 31], which have, I think, generated a lot of these cases, and we see a lot of connections with some of these gatherings. And we have to do our best to stress the urgency of abiding by all of our efforts."

District officials urged parents and students to cooperate honestly with the district's social distancing and self-reported health screening regulations. Every day, parents fill out a screening form on their students' behalf using a tool created by the New York-based company Ruvna, but some may not be accurately describing their students' activities.

“We also as a team are looking at the consequences for those that are disregarding our mitigation efforts, including social distancing, mask-wearing and Ruvna [screening]. So these are things that we really need to do to make sure that we can sustain our in-person learning to make sure we can sustain our extracurricular program, our athletic program," Sally said. "We need the support of parents, the community and students to help us do this."

Rules need to be specific and parents need to be held accountable, "Otherwise, it's going to be a bad scene," said board member Brad McLane.

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Board member Carol Ducommun said her heart sank when she learned that off-campus partying by a small minority of students had contributed to the need to quarantine nearly 200 students. She said she felt as if a contract between the board and the staff had been broken and expressed doubts that students and parents were having honest conversations about extracurricular activities.

“How many kids are telling their parents, ‘By the way, there were 20-some kids here when I told you I was going to be with two.'?" Ducommun asked. "So I don’t know how to get around that, short of forcing some parent responsibility, and I don’t know what that looks like. But if there’s a way to hold parents accountable for how they filled out the form and kind of pushing that conversation back to their students, ‘I’m accountable for this, what did you do?’"

Board member Greg Robitaille said he was frustrated by those who acted in bad faith and submitted inaccurate answers on the health screening form.

“To have people just completely disregard this, knowingly, and to claim I didn’t know I was at a gathering with people and potentially got exposed, I don’t accept that from anybody. And then the parents are complicit because they either knew or should have known, and I’m clearly frustrated by this small minority of people who are putting everybody else at risk," Robitaille said. “The weakest link is really going to bring this whole thing down for the rest of us.”

Quarantined sports teams include the varsity dance team, the boys and girls varsity basketball teams and the boys sophomore basketball teams.

According to the superintendent, contact tracing has not determined if any of the transmission occurred on campus. He said there were some "unusual" and "non-classroom" contacts that may have led to coronavirus exposure. But the precise source of each infection may be "unknowable," he told the board.

“We have no final determination yet, but there are situations that we’re looking at," he said. "It’s sort of a unique classroom environment that we’re just looking at and trying to make sure we understand. What you have is you have a web of connections now, and so to say it’s any one thing can be difficult. But that doesn’t mean we’re not looking into it to make sure what protocols were followed in these situations and does anything need to change from it."

More than 97 percent of students on campus are participating in the district's mandatory saliva testing program, up from less than 83 percent before participating became required in December. Participation among staff, which remains voluntary, has risen from under 75 percent at the start of last month to nearly 85 percent last week, according to district data.

Board member Jean Hahn said the high percentage of participation is amazing. She said it was always clear that the hybrid learning plan would be a challenge.

"It’s part of your weekend ritual now, and it’s pretty encouraging to see that many people on campus on a frigid Sunday morning. So while the news of the past weekend is disappointing, I think we’re rising to the occasion," Hahn said. "Parenting an adolescent through this is challenging every day in different ways, and it’s a balancing act between keeping their mental health and their need for some socialization and doing the right thing by your community. So I think this is just a reminder that it might feel like you need this this weekend, to see your friends, but it affects everybody so let’s double down on our vigilance.”

Robitaille said he was encouraged by conversations with representatives of unions representing district staff about getting more employees to opt in to the weekly testing.

“They were fully supportive, and you know they’re dealing with a set of individuals and these individuals have different points of view, but they made a pledge to continue to work hard at this, and I think we saw it in the numbers," he said. "We’d love it at 100 percent, but it’s not going to get there, and I think it’s going in the right direction and I feel really good looking at those numbers and the progress that’s been made.”