3 Valley high schools closed to in-class learning for the remainder of the month; State reports single-day high of COVID-19 cases in the borough

Three Valley high schools that have been closed all week will remain closed to in-class learning for the remainder of the month due to COVID-19 concerns.

Colony High, Wasilla High and Mat-Su Career and Technical High will all be closed through Oct. 30, according to an update courtesy of the Mat-Su Borough School District Thursday evening. The three high schools are among 20 schools in the district currently listed at the medium risk level by the district, which is defined as low to moderate level of community transmission. Colony had positive coronavirus cases reported on Oct. 7, Oct. 15 and Oct. 16. Mat-Su Career and Tech had positive cases on Oct. 14, Oct. 16 and Oct. 21. Wasilla High had positive cases reported on Oct. 17.

MSBSD Dr. Randy Trani said during the Mat-Su School Board meeting Wednesday that additional time needed for contact tracing is leading to longer school closures.

“We feel like the mitigation that we’re doing in schools is really effective,” Trani said. “Another huge part of the decision making has to do with DHSS’s capacity to do the contact tracing. So a case that had happened two or three weeks ago might’ve resulted in only a classroom being excluded for a time period or maybe the school for one day, but as the cases across the community have increased their ability to contact trace each of our cases has diminished. So out of an abundance of caution you’ve noticed this week schools are being closed more frequently and for longer and that’s primarily because the bottleneck on contact tracing.”

A total of 59 cases within 28 district schools had been confirmed as of the school board meeting Wednesday. Additional cases were reported at Birchtree Charter, Mat-Su Central, and at Burchell High on Friday. A positive case at the district administration building was reported Thursday.

In addition to Colony High, Wasilla High and Mat-Su Career and Tech, five other schools were closed through Friday. That list also includes Big Lake Elementary, Houston Jr./Sr. High, Mat-Su Central, Palmer Junior Middle and Redington Jr./Sr. High.

A single-day record of 32 new coronavirus cases were reported in the Mat-Su Borough Friday. This is a day after a then-record 25 cases were reported. Twenty-five cases were also reported on Oct. 19, and 20 or more cases reported in a single day in the borough four times since Oct. 10. There have been 955 total cases reported in the borough, and 403 are considered active. Only 25 hospitalizations and two deaths have been recorded among Valley residents.

The borough remains at the state’s high alert level with 241 cases reported in the last 20 days. The borough’s percent positivity rate stands at 8.05 percent as of Friday, which is two percent higher than Anchorage.

Of the borough’s cumulative total, there have been 590 cases in Wasilla, 286 in Palmer, 25 in Willow, 21 in Big Lake, 11 in Houston, two in Meadow Lakes, one in Knik-Fairview, and 12 are listed as other.

Contact Frontiersman managing editor Jeremiah Bartz at editor@frontiersman.com.