By Linda Kor Snowflake Unified School District opened its campuses for in-person learning on Aug. 17 and since then the Arizona Department of Health Services dash board, has shown that cases in Snowflake and Taylor have increased over the past week. When contacted, Navajo County Public Health Director Jeff Lee confirmed the increase and noted, “We do have new cases in the Snowflake/Taylor area. The school district has identified new cases in their schools and are working with parents, staff and public health to apply the appropriate protocols for schools.” Regarding the schools, Superintendent Hollis Merrill stated that the district has had three confirmed student cases and three confirmed staff cases of COVID since opening six weeks ago; the first positive test coming just after the schools opened. When asked regarding the protocol and if families in the district were notified when the cases were reported to the district, Merrill stated that the district had notified parents and deferred to Navajo County Public Health to determine how to proceed stating, “They are contact tracing but it’s really difficult to do that.” According to Merrill, the cases were at different schools in the district including Snowflake Junior High and Snowflake Intermediate. “We do follow protocol. Everyone wears masks and everything is sterilized every day. The kids are good about it because they want to stay in school and they know how important that is.” Although the first case was reported five weeks ago, a notification was sent to families and the press just last Friday from the district regarding the cases. In the statement Merrill noted, “In the past five weeks, we have had three students and three employees district wide test positive. In addition, other staff members and students have stayed home when they have been feeling sick. Some of them have chosen to get tested with the majority of them receiving negative tests.” Merrill noted that initially, the county health department personnel were making contact with families if a student needed to be quarantined, or stay at home due to contact with a person who has tested positive. “Moving forward, our staff will be making the majority of those calls. However, some situations will still require the staff from the county to make contact with families in our communities.” Merrill has no plans to close campuses with the outbreak. Snowflake was one of the first districts in Navajo County to re-open and according to Merrill, the first to report any positive COVID-19 cases.
