Covid-affected schools take different paths

One of the two Nelson schools affected by Covid-19 plans to reopen on Monday but the other will use online learning until the summer holidays.

Enner Glynn School principal Isaac Day said the school would reopen on Monday if possible.

Broadgreen Intermediate principal Pete Mitchener said the intermediate would shift to online teaching until the term ended.

A staff member at each school was confirmed to have the virus on Wednesday. Both schools were closed on Thursday and yesterday during contact tracing.

Mitchener said Broadgreen opted for online teaching next week due to a large number of staff being close contacts of the staff member who was infectious while at school on November 23. That made staffing the school impossible.

The decision was jointly made by the school, the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, and the board of trustees, Mitchener said.

Parents had been supportive despite understandable frustration.

Mitchener said unfortunately it took a long time to work through close and casual contact lists, with a lot of ‘‘back and forth’’ between the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health.

It was late on Thursday evening when parents received letters telling them whether their child needed to be tested.

Given testing stations had already closed by that time, this was ‘‘frustrating’’ for parents, he said.

The testing station on site had been well received. He was not aware of any other positive cases within the school community.

Day said Enner Glynn School planned to be open on Monday. The school finished its term on December 14, and was hoping to be open until then.

The decision to reopen was made by the school and the board of trustees, and the Ministry of Education was supportive.

Currently, there were 34 close contacts within the students, and nine staff had been identified as close contacts, Day said. They were all isolating and getting tested.

Day was ‘‘thrilled’’ with the support shown from the Enner Glynn community.

He said the current mood involved a little bit of trepidation but people were largely taking things in their stride.

‘‘People are handling it really well, lots of resilience.’’

Day said the school community was trying to make sure the students didn’t miss out, while navigating the unknown and working within a framework.