JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Emily Thompson said she felt relief watching her son get in line to have his temperature checked before he walked into his school for the first day of sixth grade Monday in east Mississippi.
For Thompson, the start of classes at Newton County Middle/High School means the return of structure. The Decatur pharmacist and her husband, who also works in health care, have both been working full-time since the pandemic started. She said it was a “nightmare” trying to keep her son, and their two other elementary-age children on track with lessons at home.
“I could not emotionally give them what they were needing,” she said.
This week, 44 Mississippi school districts are returning to in-person instruction for the first time since March, many with safety precautions like mandatory mask-wearing, temperature checks and daily sanitizing. Another six districts are starting this week with only remote instruction.
Advocates for returning in-person classes said children need structure and many are missing educational opportunities at home. But with rising cases of coronavirus in Mississippi, some are sounding the alarm that it might be too soon.
“It’s given me a lot of anxiety,” Mississippi’s state health officer, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, told the Mississippi State Medical Association on Friday.
Dobbs described sending students back to school as a “frightening experiment” and said some districts are more prepared than others. He urged districts to rely on online education as much as possible.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves spent the weekend reviewing hundreds of pages of plans sent in from almost 140 districts on how they will approach instructing students this fall. Most have offered the choice of either in-person instruction or virtual instruction.
Corinth School District was among the first to re-open for in-person instruction last week. On Friday, as Mississippi reported its highest-ever daily death count at 52 coronavirus-related fatalities, the district announced its first positive case in the high school. On Monday afternoon, a week after students returned to the school, the district reported two more positive cases.
Dobbs said the first student who tested positive was exposed outside school. At least 14 Corinth students are now in quarantine.
Thompson said she doesn’t have much concern for her kids getting very sick, at least right now. She noted that symptoms were generally reported to be less severe in children and that she doesn’t think schools would be open if it’s truly unsafe.
Thompson said if she were to keep her three children at home, she would have to hire a babysitter to watch them during the day and then do home school lessons at night.
“It would be more detrimental not to send them, in my opinion, than for them to hang out and do the virtual learning,” she said. “I think they’re going to get more interaction at school, they are going to learn more at school. They just need to be in that setting.”
The Health Department said Monday that Mississippi, which has a population of about 3 million, has had at least 61,125 cases and at least 11,711 deaths from COVID-19 as of Sunday evening. That’s an increase of 572 confirmed cases and eight deaths from numbers reported the day before.
The true number of virus infections is thought to be far higher because many people have not been tested and studies suggest people can be infected without feeling sick. For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms. For some, especially older adults and those with existing health problems, it can cause more severe or fatal illness.
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Leah Willingham is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
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Follow AP coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak.
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