School districts in Seattle cancel classes, move to online learning as COVID cases surge

Several schools in Seattle and around the Puget Sound closed Friday or announced they were shifting to remote learning as educators continue to grapple with staffing shortages and student absences amid a surge in new coronavirus cases.

Seattle Public Schools canceled classes at Chief Sealth International High School, Cleveland High School, Lincoln High School and at all Interagency High School sites.

The district also announced that students at Aki Kurose Middle School, Mercer Middle School, Meany Middle School, Olympic Hills Elementary and South Shore PreK-8 will attend remote classes until Jan. 21. The same is true for elementary students at Broadview-Thompson K-8.

Classes at Franklin High School and Lowell Elementary will also be online until Jan. 17 and 19, respectively.

As the extraordinarily contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus began to spread throughout Washington last month, the return to online learning for some of the state’s public school students seemed almost inevitable. The state is now averaging nearly 16,000 new cases per day, a whopping 217% increase over the past two weeks.

It’s clear that schools are not immune from the surge. Seattle Public Schools, which tracks the number of new cases in the district on a per-week basis, recorded 803 new cases among students and staff between Jan. 1 and Jan. 7. The district’s previous one-week high in new cases for the school year was 139.

In the Lake Washington School District, the second-largest district in the state behind Seattle Public Schools, classes at Redmond Middle School were canceled Friday.

In a message to parents on Thursday, the district said 25% of the school’s staff would be absent Friday. Administrators plan to meet Monday to decide whether the school will temporarily shift to remote learning.

Students at four of the district’s high schools — Lake Washington High School, Juanita High School, Redmond High School and Emerson High School — are attending classes online until the end of next week.

On a brighter note, public health experts around the U.S. believe the omicron surge will peak sometime this month. If they’re right, that means the remainder of this school year won’t resemble the 2020-21 school year, when most students spent an entire year learning online.

That should also be good news for the state’s hospitals, which are also experiencing widespread staffing shortages while they deal with a wave of new coronavirus patients. On Thursday, state Gov. Jay Inslee announced that members of the Washington National Guard will help staff hospitals as the surge in new cases continues.