The Moore County Department of Education along with the Moore County Department of Health and the Moore County EMA developed a Pandemic Response Plan for COVID-19. The plan is detailed and describes what will determine the need to close our school system during this event. Multiple departments within the county will have input into the decision to close our schools, and for how long it will be necessary. Our decisions on school closure will be based on data from our departments as well as the Tennessee Department of Health, Tennessee Department of Education, and the Center for Disease control. As a team, we will make decisions from this data to attempt to chart the best course for our community. Please understand that these decisions will be taken very seriously and are not being made by one person.
While schools remain open at this time, students should not attend school if they are sick. Dr. notes will not be needed for excused absences. Absences during this event will not be used to determine exam exemptions at MCHS.
Please consider this specifically from the CDC guidance for schools:
"Available modeling data indicate that early, short to medium closures do not impact the epi curve of COVID-19 of available health care measures (e.g., hospitalizations). There may be some impact of much longer closures (8 weeks, 20 weeks) further into community spread, but that modeling also shows that other mitigation efforts (e.g., handwashing, home isolation) have more impact on both spread of disease and health care measures. In other countries, those places who closed school (e.g., Hong Kong) have not had more success in reducing spread than those that did not (e.g., Singapore)."