Staff COVID quarantines at Wichita schools reach record level; student numbers drop

More than 900 Wichita Public School employees are in quarantine, up more than 250 from last week’s report. It’s more than a tenfold increase in quarantines in three weeks.

Meanwhile, the number of students in quarantine dropped from last week’s record high of nearly 4,900 students (more than 10% of the roughly 47,200 students) to 3,300, the second-highest number this school year.

Positive cases dipped slightly for employees and a little more for students.

Friday’s report shows nearly 12% of employees in quarantine. The 900-plus was by far the highest weekly number since reports started at the beginning of the school year. The numbers have climbed steeply over the last few weeks.

The Dec. 22 report showed 85 employees quarantined. That number quadrupled to around 400 in the next report (which was a little more than a week later and included a majority of the winter break), then about 250 more the next week and roughly another 250 this week — for a total of 912 employees in quarantine.

For perspective, the highest number of quarantines from August to mid-December was around 250 in September.

This week’s data coincides with the first COVID-19 building closures of the school year. Officials at the largest school district in Kansas were forced to close multiple buildings this week because of staffing shortages attributed to a surge of COVID-19 cases mostly led by the omicron variant. Four buildings were closed Friday.

Other districts across the state have also announced closings this week. Kansas’ school staffing crisis has become so severe that last week the Kansas State Board of Education lowered the standard for substitute teachers.

Rather than go remote like districts did last school year, districts are closing buildings after the Kansas Legislature passed a law restricting remote learning to no more than 40 hours for an individual student.

Schools can request waivers from their local boards for a student to exceed the 40 hours or for districts to operate remotely for up to 240 hours, according to The Kansas City Star.

Wichita Public Schools’ COVID-19 dashboard tracks cases and quarantines district-wide and by building.

Here’s what it showed:

• Positive cases among staff took a slight dip from last week’s record of 317 cases to 306 for testing done between Jan. 13-Jan. 19. The 306 positive tests are still historically high. Until a huge week-over-week spike from 32 to 237 around the start of the year, the highest weekly report was 56 in September.
• Student positive cases dipped from last week’s record of 1,192 to 806. That drop comes after a holiday on Monday and three elementary schools closed Tuesday because of staffing issues — both would help reduce student exposure. Before, the highest number was 522 during a week spanning the end of August and the beginning of September. From the beginning of the school year to a week in December with 57 cases, the average weekly case number was 153.

In Wichita, the report comes as Sedgwick County sets records for its percent of positive COVID-19 cases and hospitals see their highest number of COVID patients.

The Sedgwick County COVID-19 dashboard shows that Sunday reached a pandemic high of nearly 23% of COVID tests coming back positive. The rolling 14-day average was at around 22.6% on Thursday, the latest day available. The weekly hospital report, released on Monday, showed a record 277 COVID patients with 80 in the intensive care units at Wesley and Ascension Via Christi. The previous high was 273 in November 2020.