Thread by @ashtonpittman

BREAKING: After one week, Pearl River Central High School has quarantined 40% of its entire student body.

When classes began, the school board made masks optional for a more "normal" school year.

Now, the entire school district is going virtual.
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The Pearl River County School Board changed its mind and mandated masks at an emergency meeting Monday to try to save in-class instruction as cases soared in the first three days.

But 25% of the high school would be quarantined by the next day (Tuesday). mississippifreepress.org/14689/pearl-ri…

“There’s so much information out there on both sides right now. … There are no right answers. There are solutions to move forward," Pearl River County Superintendent Alan Lumpkin during Monday's emergency school board meeting on Zoom.
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“I understand and I sympathize with everything going on,” school-board member Mark Herrin said during the Zoom meeting Monday night. "I consider myself a responsible parent, my wife is a responsible parent, & my kids aren’t going to school with masks on.”
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“Although I wear my face masks quite a bit, I’m not convinced that they work, & in order to tell all these kids & adults once again that you’ve got to wear a facemask just seems overboard at this point,” said school board member Christian Burge. mississippifreepress.org/14689/pearl-ri…

At Monday's emergency meeting, the Pearl River County School Board, including Burge, voted 3-2 to adopt masks.

But they also voted that night to scrap plans to follow CDC recommendations to go virtual if schools detect outbreaks among 3 cohort groups. mississippifreepress.org/14689/pearl-ri…

Last year, Pearl River Schools adopted a policy to go all-virtual if a school had outbreaks in 3 cohort groups (e.g., classes, teams). But no district school had 3 cohort outbreaks at once in 2020.

This year, outbreaks hit 10 PRCHS cohorts after one week.mississippifreepress.org/14689/pearl-ri…

Gov. Tate Reeves insisted in a tweet today that “there will be no lockdowns and there will be no statewide (mask) mandates," including in schools, despite warning from hospital leaders that the health care system is on the brink of “failure.” mississippifreepress.org/14689/pearl-ri…

Gov. Reeves: “The reality is there is an opportunity for them to recognize how bad the cases are, how many vaccinated they have in their school among kids and employees, and they can make that decision on the local level." mississippifreepress.org/14689/pearl-ri…

Other school districts in Pearl River County began with masks required.

Nearby Picayune Memorial High School flags flew at half-staff on the first day in honor of a young teacher who died Aug. 4 and a 16-year old student who died July 25—both of COVID-19. mississippifreepress.org/14689/pearl-ri…

Pear River School Board member Jerry Frazier on Monday: “We had this last school year to see what did and didn’t work. And one thing we did is we had kids wearing masks. ... And we know we didn’t have to close schools down during that period."
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These massive schools outbreaks come amid news that the Children's of Mississippi, the only pediatric hospital in the state, is at max capacity. Children sick with COVID-19 are on ventilators.

The number of adult ICU beds available in the state is ZERO.
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The Pearl River County School District posted the photo featured in this story on July 31 with the following caption:

"PACKED HOUSE!! Freshman Orientation was such a GREAT event last night!"

Classes began a week later with masks optional at first. mississippifreepress.org/14689/pearl-ri…

Note: I predicted that things would probably not go well in the Pearl River County School District back on Aug. 5, hours before classes began. But anyone who paid even a tiny bit of attention to what's happened since March 2020 could've predicted this.

https://twitter.com/ashtonpittman/status/1423168951626960899

The Pearl River School District has confirmed 101 positive cases of COVID-19 in its elementary, middle and high schools.

For perspective, the MS State Dept. of Health reported just under 1,000 cases in all Mississippi school districts for last week. mississippifreepress.org/14689/pearl-ri…

In 2020, no school in the Pearl River district had to quarantine more than two cohorts (whole classrooms, teams, etc.) at once. After just one week in 2021:

Cohort Groups Quarantined
Elementary School - 4
Middle School - 11
High School - 11
#DeltaVariant mississippifreepress.org/14689/pearl-ri…