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More than 400 Fort Zumwalt students are in quarantine due to COVID contact

“The 400 students quarantined, that’s about 2.5 percent of our 17,500 students, so the percentage is not outrageous at this point," Superintendent DuBray said

ST. CHARLES COUNTY, Mo. — Some students have been back in school for a couple of weeks now, and many districts are dealing with a spike in COVID cases. As a result, some students have had to quarantine.

One of those districts is Fort Zumwalt, where hundreds of kids are in quarantine right now.

Fort Zumwalt is a district that updates COVID information right on its website.

According to their COVID dashboard Tuesday morning, for instance, Dardenne Elementary has three students currently on full COVID quarantine.

Tuesday morning, the district as a whole had 393 students on COVID quarantine. By Tuesday evening, that number was up to 455.

“The 400 students quarantined, that’s about 2.5 percent of our 17,500 students, so the percentage is not outrageous at this point," Superintendent Bernard DuBray said. "But any time a kid is not allowed to go to school, you’re worried about that.”

Fort Zumwalt is a district that does not have a mask mandate.

“No mask mandate doesn’t mean kids can’t wear a mask,” said DuBray. “Because we do have plenty of kids who are wearing a mask because their parents are encouraging them to do that.”

Fort Zumwalt parents were asked how they feel administrators are doing when it comes to combatting COVID.

“Kids are still up in the air on what to do or what not to do," parent Mel Askins said. "I think communications have been fairly good, but they don’t know what’s going on. It’s kind of a day-to-day, flavor-of-the-day type thing. They’re trying to do the best they can, but with things changing, it is what it is.”

“It’s going poorly,” said parent Tina Laroue. “I think there should be a mask mandate for all the students and the teachers. I have a high school senior and I’m very worried she’s at risk every time she walks in that school.”

There have been nearly 90 positive cases among students at Fort Zumwalt.

DuBray said about 40% of quarantined students had a close COVID contact with somebody outside of school.

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