Covid Surge Forces Atlanta Schools to Start Year Remotely

• Jan. 3, 2022Updated 6:26 p.m. ET

ATLANTA — Days aft announcing that classes for K-12 students would beryllium held successful idiosyncratic aft the vacation break, officials with Atlanta Public Schools reversed their decision, saying connected Saturday that classes would beryllium online lone during the archetypal week of the year.

The determination came “after further reappraisal of territory and assemblage Covid-19 data,” a connection from the territory said. Nearby Clayton, DeKalb, Fulton and Rockdale Counties person besides pushed backmost the instrumentality to in-person classes due to the fact that of precocious corruption rates successful those areas.

On Friday, the Georgia Department of Health reported much than 24,000 cases of Covid-19 successful the state. As of Sunday, the authorities had a seven-day mean of 14,343 cases per day, according to a New York Times database. That is simply a spike of much than 700 percent implicit 2 weeks.

The Atlanta schoolhouse territory recorded its 2nd highest play number of affirmative cases for the schoolhouse twelvemonth during the last week of the autumn semester, with 306 students and 129 employees investigating positive. The highest positivity complaint was successful August erstwhile 520 radical were sick.

Students who needed laptops and different devices for virtual classes were encouraged to prime them up astatine their schools connected Monday. Those who needed repast kits could prime them up astatine 1 of 8 schools crossed the city.

Atlanta Public Schools unit members were required to spell to enactment connected Monday for mandatory Covid investigating unless they were sick.

“The information collected from unit investigating volition beryllium utilized for aboriginal planning,” the district’s connection connected Saturday said.

Students are expected to instrumentality to in-person classes connected Jan. 10.