West Orange HS Goes Half-Remote After ‘Uptick’ In COVID Cases

WEST ORANGE, NJ — West Orange High School will go partially remote starting Monday, Dec. 20 due to an “uptick” in coronavirus cases, officials say.

District officials released the following message on Friday:

“Over the course of the last week, the high school has experienced an uptick in COVID cases and the number of close contacts who need to quarantine. Our concern is always for the health and safety of our students, staff, and families. Due to the increase in cases, we felt it prudent to seek consultation from the district physician and local Department of Health regarding additional steps to mitigate the spread of this potentially deadly virus. We all want to be here in person and maintain our normal school day schedule. However, with more than 2,300 people in our building every day, distancing remains a challenge in our hallways and lunchrooms as well as on our buses.”

West Orange school officials continued:

“We have already taken steps to reduce the density in the lunches by dividing them in two and also by allowing seniors to leave the building during lunch. While the case numbers and level of community transmission were low, we made every effort to proceed with school as normal or at least as close to normal as possible. Now, in the immediate term, that the numbers are rising, we felt the need to further reduce the risk to our students, staff, and families. Our district physician concurred. As a result, after consulting with the Superintendent we have determined that the best course of action for West Orange High School in the immediate future is to take a proactive approach to reduce the density of students in the building by going to a 50% cohort model, effective Monday, December 20. This course of action is aligned with the updated New Jersey Department of Health Guidelines which state: “schools may consider a temporary transition of affected cohorts to remote learning if a high number of cases is preventing timely contact tracing and exclusion and a short-term transition to remote learning is needed to allow for such actions to occur.”

“This means that students with last names that begin with A through K are assigned to Cohort 1 while last names that begin with L through Z are assigned to Cohort 2,” administrators said. “On days when students are not expected to attend in person, they will attend classes virtually.”

Officials added:

“We are NOT changing our daily rotating schedule. Classes will run during the normal times, from 7:30 am until 2:15 pm. Please note that this change ONLY impacts the High School, and the changes start Monday, December 20. All students who are not attending in person will attend remotely. Lunch will continue to be served at school. Further details will follow on food services. Any changes that may occur that are district-wide will override this schedule. We will await guidance from the superintendent about any other modifications.”

According to Essex County, here are the latest cumulative COVID-19 case totals for West Orange, which had a population of 47,563 in a recent estimate from the U.S. Census. Read More: West Orange COVID Update (Latest Case Totals, How To Get Vaccine)

• Dec. 15 - 5,644 total cases, 238 deaths
• Nov. 15 - 5,269 total cases, 236 deaths
• Oct. 15 - 5,127 total cases, 235 deaths

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