{"id":44595,"date":"2021-09-23T02:43:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-23T08:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-schools-report-spike-in-covid-19-cases\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:20:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:20:17","slug":"montezuma-cortez-schools-report-spike-in-covid-19-cases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-schools-report-spike-in-covid-19-cases\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma-Cortez schools report spike in COVID-19 cases"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cortez
Cortez school board members on Tuesday declared a critical teacher shortage, which is affecting schools in the district, including Montezuma-Cortez High School.<\/span>Sam Green\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The Montezuma-Cortez School District RE-1 issued a letter shortly after 4 p.m. stating that as of Wednesday, the district had seen the highest number of COVID-19 cases so far this school year.<\/p>\n

The district also reported that for the first time that students were infecting other students.<\/p>\n

The district posted the letter on its Facebook page, where it also reported multiple incidents of vandalism in school restrooms \u201cwhich could get in the way of providing hand washing opportunities for others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Montezuma-Cortez High School Principal Eric Chandler also sent a letter Wednesday informing the community that an individual at the school had tested positive for the virus.<\/p>\n

Since the beginning of the school year, there have been 30 total cases of COVID-19 in the district, said Assistant Superintendent Lis Richard on Tuesday during the monthly board meeting.<\/p>\n

As of Tuesday night, five students and three staff were virus-positive. No staff had tested positive in the past two weeks of school until Tuesday evening, she said.<\/p>\n

Seventy-four students are quarantined, Richard added.<\/p>\n

The total number of cases Wednesday was not available.<\/p>\n

One classroom at Montezuma-Cortez Middle School had five positive cases between weeks four and five, and one Kemper Elementary School class was quarantined after a student\u2019s middle school sibling tested positive, she said.<\/p>\n

A letter Thursday from the middle school said the Montezuma County Health Department identified an outbreak in one of the sixth grade classrooms, and that there were nine positive cases \u2014 five in the past two days. The students have been quarantined since Friday, it said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019ve seen in week four and five is our students transmitting it amongst one another, and we hadn\u2019t seen that really before,\u201d Richard said.<\/p>\n

She mentioned that a district charter school closed in-person classes because of the virus. Southwest Open School announced Sept. 15 that it was moving fully online until Friday, Sept. 27, because staff were exposed to the virus at a staff training meeting Sept. 10, a letter posted on the school\u2019s Facebook page said. Staff would be quarantined for 10 days.<\/p>\n

The school board discussed making potential changes to its Citizen\u2019s Guide to Reopening<\/a>. Some expressed concern that students were being quarantined who didn\u2019t end up testing positive for the coronavirus.<\/p>\n

The board ultimately voted to keep the guide as is \u2013 continuing to follow state and CDC guidelines \u2014 instead of adding stronger language that would more strictly enforce quarantines for close contacts.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Department of Public Health<\/a> and CDC<\/a> use terms like \u201crecommend\u201d or \u201cshould\u201d in school quarantines guidelines, Richard said, which has led to parent confusion at the school level.<\/p>\n

Those with symptoms must stay home regardless, Superintendent Risha VanderWey said.<\/p>\n

Only board members Stacey Hall and Sherri Wright voted to add more definite language to the guide, after district staff said vague quarantine language made it harder to streamline school responses to the virus.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we say we\u2019ll quarantine then we\u2019re going to, if we leave it and say that it\u2019s optional we might as well not quarantine at all,\u201d said Montezuma-Cortez Middle School Principal Drew Pearson.<\/p>\n

Board member Sheri Noyes said she wanted to keep children in school.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of alarming that we had taken away many days of education for these students that were \u2014 for the most part \u2014 healthy and could\u2019ve gone to school,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Board member Tammy Hooten agreed, saying she thought too many children were in quarantine, and that the additional weight of teaching online to quarantined students was a burden to teachers.<\/p>\n

She considers the virus to be \u201ca real deal,\u201d she added, saying that members of her own family have struggled with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow long do we plan to do this? The rest of our children\u2019s educational career from here on out? This is something that\u2019s apparently not going away. Do we want to have teachers stressed and tired and worn out just dealing with this for the rest of their careers?\u201d Noyes asked. \u201cWe did our due diligence in the beginning last year, and we\u2019re no further ahead, really.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, I\u2019m saying we give them every freedom they have until the government decides to put their foot back down again and take them all away from us,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

VanderWey recommended that the district err on the side of caution regarding the virus, and board member Jack Schuenemeyer agreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe governor is not stating that we\u2019re in an emergency. The country is not stating that we\u2019re in an emergency. And public health is not stating an emergency, but I can tell you that I have a lot of staff that are afraid and are scared, and they\u2019re with these kids every day,\u201d VanderWey said.<\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t want to see schools \u201cemptied out\u201d because of staff sickness, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am on the conservative side for the 2,800 kids that we serve, the 400 staff that we serve, and the community of Cortez. And it might sound dramatic, but a lot of my kids, my staff and our families \u2014 we touch everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hall expressed concern that some students in quarantine would be home alone without someone to support their learning.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality of it is, at some point we have to let parents be parents,\u201d Wright said.<\/p>\n

Wright said one parent approached her, saying that of their two middle school children, who shared a bedroom at home, one was quarantined and the other was not.<\/p>\n

The district is waiting on tests from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment as part of the state\u2019s free, voluntary weekly antigen rapid testing program<\/a> for schools. Some board members were concerned about the possibility of false positives with the tests. Richard said students must confirm their positive diagnoses with a hospital test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

District also reports students are infecting students <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[685,155,28,167,216,29,445],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-44595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-education","tag-headlines","tag-local-news-lead","tag-montezuma-cortez-school-district-re-1","tag-newsletter","tag-newsletter-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44595"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86152,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44595\/revisions\/86152"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44595"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=44595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}