Students, staff to return to Wayne County elementary school after coronavirus cluster

An elementary school in Wayne County has reported its first cluster of coronavirus cases, despite having 96 cases of coronavirus connected to campus.

Posted 5:58 p.m. Oct 15, 2020 — Updated 11:06 p.m. Oct 19, 2020

GOLDSBORO, N.C. — Staff and students will return to campus after a coronavirus cluster was reported.

North Drive Elementary staff will be allowed to return to campus on Oct. 21. Students will then transition back to Plan B on Oct. 22.

Four staff members and two students from North Drive Elementary School contracted COVID-19. The six infected individuals have not been on campus, according to district officials.

The school moved to remote learning after announcing the cluster on Ot. 15. Brogden Primary School, also an elementary school, moved classes online until Oct. 20 after coronavirus cases were reported at the school.

North Drive reported four cases from Oct. 6 to Oct. 9. The dashboard shows that the next two cases connected to the cluster were reported on Oct. 15.

Ninety-six coronavirus cases have been conected to the school district since August.

WCPS officials said in Thursday's press release that they are taking all the necessary precautions from the North Carolina Department of Health. But Tiffany Kilgore, who represents Wayne County's Association of Educators and is a choral teacher at Norwayne Middle School doesn't agree.

"We don't have custodial staff, or if we do have the staff, all they can do is sanitize, but they're not cleaning because they don't have time to do both," she said on Wednesday. "We know remote learning is not what's best for our kids, but we need to put their safety before their learning."

Kilgore contracted the virus back in September and has since recovered.

Wayne County Public Schools transitioned from remote learning to hybrid learning on Sept. 8. From mid-August to early September,the district already had 14 reported cases of coronavirus.

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