No COVID-19 Outbreak In Toms River Schools, Superintendent Says

TOMS RIVER, NJ — There is no COVID-19 outbreak in the Toms River Regional School District and no plans to shift schools or the district to fully virtual instruction, Interim Superintendent Stephen Genco said Thursday.

In a letter to the district's staff, parents and families, Genco pushed back on news reports about the number of students and staff who are quarantined and reports that linked the number to the district's decision to allow some of its schools to have masks optional in the early days of the school year.

The district maintains a dashboard that is updated daily showing how many students and staff members are quarantined, and how many positive cases of COVID-19 there have been in the district during the school year. On Wednesday, one news outlet reported the district had 1,100 students and staff in quarantine. At mid-morning Wednesday that dashboard showed 881 students and staff members quarantined. Read more: 881 Students, Teachers In NJ School District On COVID Quarantine

The numbers drew widespread attention, including from Gov. Phil Murphy and Judith Persichilli, who mentioned the Toms River schools during the Wednesday coronavirus update conference and expressed concern about the number.

Genco said the reports that tied the quarantine number to mask enforcement in the district's schools were misleading.

In August, Gov. Phil Murphy issued Executive Order 251, mandating that students, staff and visitors wear masks while they are in school buildings, with a handful of exceptions, such as lunch. Among the exceptions is one for "extreme heat."

Genco said the district has followed the mask mandate, including on the days where it exercised the extreme heat exemption.

"Masks were only optional in non-air-conditioned spaces," Genco said.

Seven of the district's 19 buildings are fully air-conditioned or have air conditioning everywhere but the gym: Toms River High School East, Toms River Intermediate North, Toms River Intermediate South; Beachwood, Citta, and South Toms River Elementary schools, and the Early Learning Center. In those schools, mask wearing was not optional, district spokesman Michael Kenny said.

At other schools, the mask optional excessive heat exemption only applied to the spaces where there is no air conditioning, Kenny said. Masks have been required throughout the district since Sept. 20, he said.

The district's quarantine number includes both those who have tested positive and those who have been required to quarantine due to possible exposure to positive cases. The district said the report that put the number at 1,100 erroneously combined the district's cumulative positive cases for the school year with the quarantine number.

The district has about 14,600 students in 19 schools and more than 2,200 staff members. As of 7 p.m. Thursday, the number of students in quarantine was at 791, and staff in quarantine was 26. There have been 217 students who have reported positive coronavirus tests to the district since the start of the 2021-22 school year, and 27 staff members.

Parents who have contacted Patch say the district has enforced the mask mandate strictly in the schools that are air-conditioned, including sending home students who do not have masks.

"My son, a 5th grader, was sent home on the second day of school for not wearing one," the mother of a Beachwood Elementary School student said.

The mother said her other child was forced to quarantine after two students in that child's class tested positive, even though her child was not identified as a close contact of either positive case. That child was included in the quarantine numbers, which she objected to because her child is healthy.

The strict application of quarantining guidelines appears to have pushed the quarantine numbers higher as a result.

Genco said the district is "doing everything required of us, and thensome, to protect our students and staff, and quite frankly, I’m extremely proud of the job we’re doing."

"I’m equally proud of, and grateful for, the parents who came forward to commend our district and everything we’re doing to keep their children safe and in school," he said.

Contact tracing is what determines whether a student has to quarantine after exposure to some who is positive for the virus. But that contact tracing is complex, an official familiar with the process told Patch.

"Was it more than 15 minutes without a masks? How close were they sitting? Were their masks up, were they down? It's as much an art as it is a science," the official said.

Contact tracing also is complicated by an unwillingness by some to tell authorities where or what activities people have participated in. A Sweet Sixteen party in Brick led to an outbreak at Brick Township High School last November, but few of those who attended admitted to being at the party, district officials said.

Ocean County has had no cases of in-school transmission and no outbreaks in the 2021-22 school year, according to the state's COVID-19 dashboard.

In Toms River Township, there have been 758 new cases of the coronavirus identified since Sept. 3, according to information published on the Ocean County Health Department's COVID-19 website. The county's website does not break down by town how many of those cases are in which age groups, but in Ocean County as a whole, there has been an uptick in the number of cases among children, with 945 new cases among those ages 0-18 from Sept. 9 through Sept. 28, averaging 49 new children's positive cases per day.

However, both the number of township cases and the number of countywide children's cases have slowed in the last week; Toms River has 113 new cases over the last six days, and the county has 229 new cases among children from Sept. 23 through Sept 28, an average of 45.8 per day.

The full text of Genco's letter is below:

To our Toms River Regional Schools staff, parents, and families:

You’ve surely heard much about our school district in the news and online over the past several days regarding our quarantine numbers and positive Covid cases. Hopefully, you’ve been able to read our clarifying statement regarding some of the erroneous and misleading reporting, and have managed to catch at least snippets of the many interviews I’ve conducted on the matter.

In any case, I felt it necessary to reach out and assure our school community that, contrary to what you may have heard, there is no Covid-19 “outbreak” in our district. Our numbers of cumulative positive cases and current quarantine numbers -- which are published on our website and have been throughout this pandemic, and which are updated daily -- are clearly and consistently trending down. As of this writing, the number of students in quarantine is 791, less than 5.5 percent of the student population, and down 28 percent overall since just last week.

There are no plans to transition to virtual learning at any school or classroom.

At no point -- as you are all aware, since we began the year with weekly mask communication -- did we not adhere to Executive Order 251, and the seven total school days during which we exercised the excessive heat exemption, masks were only optional in non-air-conditioned spaces.

We’re doing everything required of us, and thensome, to protect our students and staff, and quite frankly, I’m extremely proud of the job we’re doing. I’m equally proud of, and grateful for, the parents who came forward to commend our district and everything we’re doing to keep their children safe and in school. Thank you.

It’s obviously frustrating to have invested considerable time responding to various reports, and we hope the conversation around our district and others throughout the state and country ultimately transitions back to education. In the meantime we’ll continue doing everything we can to keep our students and staff safe and in school, while keeping you informed as well. Thank you for your understanding and support.

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