COVID-19 spike pushes Hoover schools back to staggered instruction format

The Hoover school system will return to a staggered in-person instruction schedule on the Monday after Thanksgiving due to a rise in community spread of the COVID-19 disease, school officials said Friday afternoon.

That means students in the Hoover High School feeder pattern whose last names begin with the letters A-L will attend school in person on Mondays and Thursdays, while students whose last names begin with M-Z will attend school in person on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Students in the Spain Park High School feeder pattern whose last names begin with the letters A-K will attend Mondays and Thursdays, while those whose last names begin with L-Z will attend Tuesdays and Fridays.

At-home, remote instruction will continue on other weekdays, with no students in person at school on Wednesdays.

Also, this staggered schedule will remain in effect once students return from their winter break. The winter break runs from an early dismissal on Friday, Dec. 18, until students return on Monday, Jan. 4. The staggered schedule will remain in effect until Tuesday, Jan. 19, when all students who chose in-person instruction will return for in-person instruction on all five weekdays each week. School is out on Monday, Jan. 18, for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Of course, students who chose the virtual school option will continue learning as they have been.

Hoover schools have seen a surge in both students and teachers testing positive for COVID-19, leading to a growing number being placed in isolation or quarantine either due to positive tests, COVID-19 symptoms or having been in close contact with someone who tested positive.

The number of students testing positive for COVID-19 has climbed from 18 on Nov. 4 to 53 on Nov. 19, and the number of school employees testing positive has climbed from five to 22 in the same time, according to statistics shared by the school system.

Two employees of Hoover City Schools who had pre-existing health issues and contracted COVID-19 have died, but Superintendent Kathy Murphy declined to give details about where they worked due to privacy concerns and said she didn’t know enough details to say whether their deaths were officially attributed to COVID-19.

An additional 84 students and seven employees were being isolated because of COVID-19 symptoms and were awaiting test results as of Nov. 19. Also, 967 students and 68 employees are currently in quarantine due to close contact with someone who tested positive.

In total, the number of students being isolated or quarantined has risen from 253 on Nov. 4 to 1,104 on Nov. 19, representing 8% of the total student population in Hoover City Schools.

The number of employees being isolated or quarantined has risen from 41 to 97, representing 5% of all Hoover City Schools employees. This has led to challenges with staffing, Murphy said.

Today, only 29% of teachers’ requests for substitute teachers were able to be filled, so school leaders have had to be creative in getting people in place to meet needs, she said.

Murphy said she is a staunch advocate for face-to-face instruction, but at some point her genuine concern for the health, safety and welfare of students and staff and the stresses of addressing staffing shortages makes the decision easier to make to return to staggered instruction for a time.

Hoover school officials also track numerous other COVID-19 metrics to determine instruction strategies, and both Jefferson and Shelby counties are currently at very high risk for community spread of COVID-19, according to the Alabama Department of Public Health.

The average daily number of new COVID-19 cases in Jefferson County fell from 281 the week of July 12 to 70 the week of Sept. 20, but it spiked back up to 278 the week of Nov. 8.

The percentage of COVID-19 tests coming back with positive test results in Jefferson County had fallen from 12% in July to 5.3% in August but jumped back up to almost 20% on Nov. 19. In Shelby County, the positivity rate fell from about 12% in July to 4.4% in August but spiked up to 23% on Nov. 19.

Health officials have said they would like to see the number of confirmed cases per 100,000 people stay below 140 per two-week period. In Jefferson County, that number in the past 14 days was 603. In Shelby County, it was 616.

Since the state began tracking COVID-19 cases, there have been a total of 189,461 confirmed cases statewide, plus another 36,449 probable cases. Of those, 27,236 were reported in the past two weeks.

So far, there have been 3,123 deaths in Alabama confirmed as being due to COVID-19, plus another 296 deaths probably a result of COVID-19. The state is reporting 23,295 hospitalizations and 90,702 recoveries.

See more details from the Hoover City Schools COVID-19 tracking dashboard here.

Editor's note: This article was updated on Nov. 24 to correct the information regarding which students attend school on which days and to correct the date that students have early dismissal for winter break, which is Friday, Dec. 18.