Routt Moving To Full Remote After COVID Cases

By Benjamin Cox on November 10, 2020 at 1:57pm

Routt Catholic High School is moving to full remote learning for the near term. Principal Nick Roscetti says that the high school had an instance of 2 positive cases of COVID-19 among the high school students that placed them into close contact with a third of the student body. Those students missed all of yesterday due to quarantine.

Roscetti says the move to remote learning was to stop further spread in the school and hopefully return to in-person learning very soon: “[I] met with the faculty yesterday afternoon and tried to find some thoughts. Just kind of sharing ideas on how we might be able to mitigate the spread any further, and the teachers kind of proposed that we go on a short-term period of remote learning. We are going to begin on Thursday. Today and tomorrow, we’re doing remote planning days to give teachers a chance to prepare for the remote learning and to give the students a chance to come in and get any other materials they might need that they didn’t take home with them.”

Roscetti says the plan is to stay remote until the week of Thanksgiving and then re-evaluate student data and see if students are still positive for the virus before making a final determination to return to in-person learning on November 30th.

Roscetti says the remote learning plan for Routt does not effect Our Saviour’s: “Because the nature of high school versus elementary, kids are moving from classroom to classroom [with] different groups of students, there is a little bit more of an opportunity to spread from one student to the next. Whereas, as Our Savior’s just kind of [is] self-containing each class within their classroom. It is a little more restrictive there, so they can kind of contain it better. Our Saviour’s is in-person learning continuing throughout today, and as far as I know that is the future plan”

Roscetti says the school is fortunate to have their 1-to-1 laptop system to keep students learning during the remote period. He says that students can still expect an in-person interaction with their peers and teachers each day: “We are planning on doing every class every day. We’ve shortened class periods by a few minutes each period, but they will get some in-person contact with their teachers on a daily basis. Again, we are hoping this is just a short-term set back, but we are trying to kind of stop it in its tracks from spreading throughout the school and just from kids being infected by others.”

Roscetti says that parents were notified of the return to remote learning on an all-call alert yesterday afternoon. Roscetti says he is unsure if this will effect the way the school board will vote on having a basketball season this winter or not. The board is set to vote on the matter tomorrow night.

Routt will still host their scheduled blood drive with the Central Illinois Community Blood Center tomorrow from 9:30AM-3:30PM. The blood mobile will be parked in the parking lot and not be inside the school.