BREWER, Maine — Brewer Community School students learned remotely last week due to a rise in COVID-19 cases.
"... We had some bad luck and a few positive cases would have ended up putting many folks into quarantine, on top of those already there," Brewer Superintendent Gregg Palmer told NEWS CENTER Maine. "All told I'm guessing we'd have been up near a few hundred out on quarantine."
Palmer said he expected most students and staff to be back in the building on Monday when in-person classes were set to resume.
Pooled testing will begin at Brewer Community School on Tuesday, Oct. 5, which Palmer believes will help the district further limit the need for quarantining.
"It will definitely help us and I think we'll have 50% of students and staff pool testing," he said.
Brewer Community School serves about 900 students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade.
The school isn’t the only school in Maine that’s been forced to go remote because of COVID-19. A spokesperson for the Maine Department of Education told NEWS CENTER Maine that as of Friday, Oct. 1, approximately 45 schools in the state have reported closing a classroom or the whole school for a day or more this year. Some of the schools implemented remote learning plans while closed. Others treated the day like a traditional snow day and students may have to make it up at some point.