A Massachusetts student attended the first day of high school three days after testing positive for COVID-19, forcing nearly 30 students into quarantine, according to officials.
Attleboro Mayor Paul Heroux confirmed the student’s parents knew about the positive test before classes began, but permitted the student to attend, according to an NBC News report.
“There’s no question about whether or not the parent knew,” Heroux said, per the report.
Heroux urged parents in a Facebook post to keep their sick children home and to continue using safe social distancing practices. He also maintained that the “school department did nothing wrong.” (RELATED: West Virginia University Suspends In-Person Classes, 29 Students Over COVID-19)
Officials said the student was tested on Sept.9 and the results came back on Sept. 11. Classes began Sept. 14, per the report.
“I knew that we were going to end up having some cases, but I didn’t expect they would be on the first day,” said school principle Bill Runey, per NBC. “Long story short, rumors started circulating around town, so someone contacted the bureau of health here in Attleboro and did some checking and found out that it was true, that he had tested positive.”
“I was pleased that our contact-tracing protocols we put in place helped us pretty quickly ID and narrow down close contacts. “Thirty is still a lot, but if we didn’t have greater degree of certainty with seating charts and things like that, we would have had to err on the side of caution for a lot more kids,” Runey added, per NBC.