Toms River Schools Taking COVID Spike 'Day-By-Day'

Toms River NJ

05 January, 2022

4:52 PM

Description

TOMS RIVER, NJ — While the sharp rise in coronavirus cases has some school districts shifting to remote instruction for a short time, the Toms River Regional School District is sticking with in-person instruction. The district has not seen an increase in cases among either students or staff that would be enough to warrant a move to virtual instruction for the entire district, officials said. "Right now, we're continuing to monitor everything on a case-by-case and day-by-day basis, and have not made any changes to our district-wide operations," said Michael Kenny, a district spokesman. The Toms River school district's dashboard showed 229 current cases among staff and students in the 13,500-student district as of 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, and there were 1,104 students and 57 staff members in quarantines because of exposures to someone positive for the virus. It's unclear how many — if any — exposures happened in the classroom, as students and staff only returned to the classrooms on Tuesday. As of Wednesday, Ocean County has seen an increase of 12,336 new cases of the coronavirus since Dec. 23, including 2,165 new infections in Toms River. There has been one Toms River resident who died of complications from COVID-19 since Dec. 23. Hospitalizations across New Jersey have been rising rapidly, with 5,464 people across the state hospitalized due to COVID-19, and 362 of those patients on ventilators. There have been 5,369 COVID-19 patients released from hospitals across New Jersey since Dec. 23, and 8,468 new admissions over that time. Kenny said Toms River has been assessing the situation but so far has not felt the increases have meant the district needs to tighten restrictions as others have done. In neighboring Manchester, the school district is limiting attendance at the high school's home sports games and matches, because the gym at the school has a small capacity. "Restricting attendance has been something that's been mentioned in conversations," Kenny said, "but we haven't noticed that attendance at these events is so great as to implement such an action." The staff cases do not appear to have had a significant impact on the district's busing, which has been stretched beyond limits since the start of the school year because of the ongoing nationwide bus driver shortage. Kenny said some of the buses for the later tiers of schools ran late, but he said that seemed to be more a result of the first day back at school after the winter break and the icy roads. He had not been alerted to any delays on Wednesday. Sign up for Patch alerts and daily newsletters here, or download our app to have breaking news alerts sent right to your phone. Have a news tip? Email [email protected] Follow Toms River Patch on Facebook