Sacramento health office reversed recommendation to close school with COVID outbreak
One of the first Sacramento City Unified School District campuses to reopen this fall experienced an outbreak of coronavirus cases in its first month back, but remained open after the local health office reversed its recommendation of a two-week campus closure, district officials and the county health officer said.
The district first announced Sept. 2 that New Joseph Bonnheim Elementary, a dependent K-6 charter school in Colonial Manor with 270 students and 23 staff members, had identified 23 positive COVID-19 cases on the campus; a pending result two days later increased that count to 24. The school began instruction Aug. 9.
County health officials ultimately responded by requiring rapid antigen testing Sept. 3 and mandatory, weekly PCR testing for at least the next three Wednesdays for all on campus.
Sacramento health officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye during a weekly call with reporters Thursday confirmed that the local health office originally called for a campus closure but reassessed after talking with district officials.
“It did appear that there might be some difficulty with the school being able to have enough staffing to keep the school open” due to quarantines, Kasirye said. “We did have subsequent discussions including the school officials … and continued to discuss what additional steps could be taken.”
K-12 school districts are required by law to report cases to the local health offices, but county health officials have discretion in handling case clusters and outbreaks. Kasirye said that, in general, there are “a lot of steps involved” when dealing with schools, and that the health office “made the decision that they should test the entire school first, and then we could base our decisions on that.”
“There were no additional positives” in the Sept. 3 rapid test results, Kasirye said, “so based on that, we required that they continue to do weekly testing, and we would monitor.”
The first round of required PCR testing performed Sept. 8 turned up two more cases, bringing the total to 26.
The campus has remained open. Active totals for New Joseph Bonnheim as of Tuesday, 12 days after the initial outbreak was disclosed, were two cases plus five in quarantine, all among students, with no staff actively infected or in quarantine, according to the district’s online COVID-19 dashboard. The dashboard is updated on Tuesdays and Fridays; this week’s results are not yet known.
“Given that this is a relatively small, tight-knit community, and that the region as a whole has high community case counts and transmission, it appears more likely that transmission is occurring outside of the school campus,” Kasirye wrote in a Sept. 2 letter to district Superintendent Jorge Aguilar, attached to the news release, informing of the required rapid testing planned for the following day.
District news releases Sept. 2 and Sept. 4, informing parents about the cases and new testing requirements, made no mention of a recommendation to close the campus, nor did Kasirye’s letter.
The district didn’t publicly acknowledge it until more than a week after the initial announcement of the cases, doing so in a news release titled, “Sacramento City Unified Keeps Students on Campus Through Testing Program.”
“While Sacramento County Public Health (SCPH) initially recommended a school closure, SCPH reversed its initial recommendation after further evaluation and consultation of the district’s capability to quickly respond with testing and staffing to provide tests to all students and staff,” that statement, posted to the district website last Saturday, read in part.
The recent weekend statement contains a prepared remark from Aguilar, saying the district was “able to respond to this situation so quickly and effectively.”
Mayor, teachers union, others weigh in
The district’s teachers union, Sacramento City Teachers Association, said in a post to its website this week that it was not made aware of the initial closure recommendation until Sept. 9, when it was disclosed by district in-house counsel during a round of negotiations.
The union blasted Aguilar and other district officials for not disclosing, during a board meeting Sept. 2 or other opportunities in communications Sept. 3, that a campus closure was being considered.
“Regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with the decision to close the school, the public, particularly the parents of NJB students, had a right to know” about the recommendation, union officials wrote.
The same day the union says it learned about the recommendation, city, county, district and campus leaders published a letter through Mayor Darrell Steinberg’s office, “urging” the district to keep the school open.
“We implore district staff and teachers to work together to ensure New Joseph Bonnheim remains open to support hundreds of kids who have nowhere else to go,” read the letter, signed by Steinberg, school board trustee Jamee Villa, three founders of New Joseph Bonnheim, county Supervisor Phil Serna and several others.
“Unfortunately, at a small school like New Joseph Bonnheim, even a handful of teachers calling out can strain the district’s ability to keep the school operating, potentially putting these kids in the middle of another argument among adults,” continued the blog post, published Sept. 9. “We are encouraged by the testing regime ordered by our County Public Health Officer.”
In another blog post from the mayor’s office one day later, local government leaders wrote for the district and county health office “to develop a plan for mandatory weekly testing regardless of vaccination status for every student, teacher, and staff member in the district at each school site.” That letter was signed by Steinberg, Serna, City Councilman Eric Guerra and state Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento.
Sacramento City Unified’s next school board meeting was scheduled for Thursday evening. An item pertaining to COVID-19 testing and vaccination policies was on the agenda.
“It definitely was encouraging to see that, with being able to do the weekly testing, that we were able to keep the school open,” Kasirye said on Thursday morning’s call. However, she also noted there is currently a nationwide supply shortage of antigen rapid test kits, “which are advantageous to use in these situations.”
While many students have had to go into quarantine — entire classes at larger schools, in some instances — full-campus shutdowns have been relatively rare across California early in the 2021-22 school year.
The only closure reported so far in the six-county region of Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba appears to be East Nicolaus High School, a campus of roughly 300 students located about 30 minutes north of the capital.
East Nicolaus High shuttered Aug. 25 and reopened Sept. 7 after an outbreak within the first week of school. The superintendent declined to say how many students or staff tested positive.
High COVID case rate, low vaccination in community
Sacramento City Unified and the county health office both noted in their communications that they believe the cases at the charter school were driven mainly by community spread, not in-school spread. Kasirye cited high case rates in the “tight-knit” neighborhood.
An August review of county data by The Sacramento Bee showed that the ZIP code including New Joseph Bonnheim, 95820, had one of the highest per-capita COVID-19 case rates among ZIP codes in Sacramento County located south of Highway 50.
“It’s not unusual when a school first opens, especially, for the school community to be a little bit shocked when they see that,” Nick Mori, who is on the county health office’s school response team, said on Thursday’s call with reporters.
Mori referred to New Joseph Bonnheim as the only large outbreak recorded so far. He said smaller clusters of cases have been held in check.
“It really is just a reflection of high community transmission. It’s not limited to schools. You see it in workplaces.”
The ZIP code also has trailed the county vaccination rate. Only 53% of residents in 95820 were at least partially vaccinated as of Sept. 3, compared to 59% across all Sacramento County residents, according to the county’s COVID-19 data dashboard.
The letter from the mayor’s office also announced a COVID-19 vaccine clinic at the New Joseph Bonnheim campus, held Sept. 10.
New Joseph Bonnheim opened in 2014, replacing Joseph Bonnheim Elementary, a non-charter that closed in 2013 due to low enrollment.
The school has an agricultural theme, with the slogan: “Where learning is natural.”
This story was originally published September 16, 2021 at 12:28 PM.
