SAD 46 officials optimistic about district case number improvement

DEXTER — Administrators across SAD 46 are feeling hopeful that COVID-19 case and quarantine numbers in district schools are coming down and the worst may be over.

“Ridge View is kind of at the point where I hope we have reached our peak and are on the down side,” District Nurse Crystal Greaves said during a school board meeting held over Zoom on Nov. 3.

She said the pre-K to grade 8 Ridge View Community School has had 51 cases so far this year, more than double all of 2020-21, but now students are attending classes in-person five days a week. Greaves said 14 people at the school are in quarantine.

A total of 352 students and staff at the school are taking part in pool testing. Greaves said this is helping students stay in school by not needing to quarantine.

Under pool testing, students, with parental permission, are in small pods to then be swabbed. Samples are sent off to the lab for testing. If there is a positive case in the pool then the students would be tested again to determine who is positive. Those testing positive would need to quarantine,and this would help determine close contacts who may also need to quarantine.

“Ridge View is up to 30 separate pools and all of our pools are negative,” she said. Greaves said the last seven days of testing have all resulted in no positives, putting the school halfway to the required 14 days to get out of outbreak status. 

Nurse Angie Buker said Dexter Regional High School has 22 positive cases and the Tri-County Technical Center has seven, with 14 students quarantining between the two schools. Buker said 120 pupils and staff are taking part in pool testing, and recent results have come back negative.

Masks are required in SAD 46 schools as Penobscot County is in the red, the most severe of the four designations under the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s community transmission color code system. 

Last month the school board approved a plan that, should the numbers drop to the lowest two designations, would make mask wearing optional on a day-by-day basis. This decision would be made by building administrators rather than the school board at its meetings.

“To reiterate, things are headed in a really great direction,” Dexter Regional High School Principal Steve Bell said at the start of his report. “The high school hasn’t had any positive tests in the pool testing in three weeks.”

He then said meetings have been held at the regional and state levels to determine what the winter athletics season will look like. “Nobody’s really making a decision,” the principal said.

“The bottom line is there’s going to be winter sports, there’s going to be some kind of mask recommendation,” Bell said. He said this decision would likely be made among individual school districts, likely after discussions with nearby administrators from other school units to determine some consensus.

Something else to be determined is the number of spectators permitted, such as home fans only, a limited number associated with the away team and/or another combination. 

Bell said discussions so far on wrestling have indicated that vaccinations may be required for participants, as they would not be able to grapple with a mask on. In 2020-21 there was no high school wrestling season in Maine, and basketball players wore masks on the court.

“We are feeling very encouraged by the end of last week and the beginning of this week,” Ridge View Principal Jessica Dyer said, mentioning the numbers of pool testing participants and positive cases Greaves cited earlier in the meeting.

She said the start of winter sports has been delayed a week from Nov. 1 to Nov. 8, to when the hope is case numbers will be even lower.