COVID Cases Reported in WHB High School, Remsenberg-Speonk School

It’s barely a week into the new school year, and already two students, one at Westhampton Beach High School and one at the Remsenburg-Speonk Elementary School, have tested positive for COVID-19, forcing district officials to scramble.

Parents in the Westhampton Beach School District on Tuesday received robo-calls or emails informing them that the high school would be closed on Wednesday, September 16, to undergo a deep cleaning after a high school student, who attended school on Monday, tested positive. While high school students were ordered to stay home for the day, the district’s elementary and middle schools remained open, according to Judy Iannone, the secretary to Superintendent Michael Radday.

A fourth-grader at Remsenburg-Speonk also tested positive on Monday, forcing the school to quarantine the student’s class, the students and two teaching assistants who rode on the same bus, and that student’s siblings, said Superintendent Denise Sullivan. She said all told, about 30 students and three staff members — the student’s teacher and two teaching aides who rode on the bus with the student — would have to stay home for two weeks.

Ms. Iannone said Westhampton Beach was following the guidelines of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Suffolk County Department of Health Services and would undertake contact tracing to determine if additional steps need to be taken.

In a message to parents, the district reported that the student had tested positive and all high school students would follow a remote learning schedule requiring them to log in to Google Classroom and follow a regular bell schedule.

Westhampton Beach, while reopening its elementary and middle schools last week, has been operating its high school on a hybrid schedule of two days on and two days off like many other East End districts.

Ms. Sullivan said that a parent had informed the district that their child had tested positive on Monday. “As soon as the parent learned, they let us know,” she said.

As part of its reopening plan, the school, which has an enrollment of 143 students in kindergarten through sixth grade, has pressed all available space into use as classrooms and has divided students into small groups that remain segregated throughout the school day. The student who tested positive was in a classroom with 11 other students, she said.

The school has in place an alternate plan to provide remote learning in the event of positive test results. “We are running two schools,” she said. “It would be easier to just have the kids go home, but we feel it’s better to keep them here as long as everyone is safe.”

She added the school based its decision after consulting with the county health department, which has a committee of physicians who reviewed the situation with school officials.

Ms. Sullivan said while it has been a trying six months, district officials are thankful to the support of the school community. “It’s the only thing that keeps us going,” she said.