Parents concerned as children in quarantine days into the school year

COVENTRY, R.I. (WLNE) – The school year is well underway for several districts in Rhode Island, but some parents are expressing frustrations as their children have already had to quarantine several times since the first day of school.

“I anticipated it, but not this soon. I thought we would have gotten through more than a week of school.”

Kara Rodrigues is a mom to a third-grader at a Coventry elementary school. She said her daughter has only spent four days in the classroom with her peers since starting school on August 30.

“We got an email last Friday, September 3rd, in the morning…it was like 11 a.m. stating that there was a positive case identified in her classroom, she’s in third grade, and that we needed to pick up the kids between 12:30 and 1:30,” she said. “They had stated they were gonna have to quarantine until today, having to do distance learning Tuesday, yesterday, and today, with the hopes of returning tomorrow in person, as long as everyone received a negative PCR test.”

Her daughter tested negative and was looking forward to returning to class on Friday.

“But we got another email yesterday, late morning, early afternoon, that another child tested positive that had been present last Friday prior to the early dismissal. So now the quarantine is extended to next Monday.”

As of Wednesday, the Rhode Island Department of Health data on K-12 schools has identified 80-84 in-person and hybrid positive cases as of August 29.

Kristey Hidalgo, a mother to a special needs student at Blackstone Valley Prep Elementary School, told ABC6 her son’s classroom was quarantined on the second day of school.

“One student on the first day of school was a known contact of a person that tested positive leaving my child along with numerous other children and teachers having to quarantine until September 4th before getting tested. We had to wait for negative PCR results before going back to school and due to the holiday our results didn’t come in until late Tuesday evening.”

Hidalgo said, as a single mother, she had to miss work for more than a week to care for her son. She said she’s fearful of what’s to come.

“My child is unable to understand what he needs to do to keep himself safe. He knows he needs to wear his mask but has terrible allergies and asthma so it is hard for him to do all day. I feel there needs to be a statewide mandate throughout all the schools in the state whether a public school, charter school, or private school to follow the same guidelines.

“My child is too young to be vaccinated and has health issues that make me fearful and indecisive for what is best for him this year. He does need the in-person interaction in order for him to have the most successful school year because he doesn’t do well with distance learning however at what cost do I make this decision when it comes to protecting his health? It’s scary and nerve-wracking as a single parent of a special needs child to see what this year has in store for us and due to this experience already, I don’t have high hopes for a successful year,” Hidalgo said.

Rodrigues also fears the situation getting worse as the school year progresses, and said she worries students aren’t in stable pods as they were last year.

“It’s frustrating and even more so after talking to my daughter and how much things have kind of laxed this year. So they’re not necessarily keeping the students in stable pods anymore, so they are back to eating in the cafeteria, they’re back to having subjects in those classrooms, so music, art and she’s sitting next to different children in each of these different subjects.

“She’s on a bus, so there’s three to a seat on the bus, they’re all masked, but again, those students, you know, they’re neighbors, they’re in other classrooms, so I’m not necessarily sure how well they’re tracing all of these cases if they’re having so many different contacts throughout the course of a day,” she said.

The Coventry School District said elementary students are in stable pods, which are their classrooms, and while they do eat in cafeterias rather than inside their classrooms, they eat with their classmates. Superintendent Craig Levis said the district is following the same protocols as the last school year.

“I mean, it’s tough because these kids are not within that group that can be vaccinated yet so they really need to be more cautious about how they’re having kids together, integrated into different classroom settings,” Rodrigues said. “I feel like this is gonna continue throughout the school year and then in the end it’s really affecting the kids and their education.”

For a look at RIDOH’s K-12 COVID-19 data, click here.

© WLNE-TV 2021