A classroom in Charlotte-Mecklenburg s Community House Middle School displays COVID-19 safety signs.
Monday s weekly tally of COVID-19 cases in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools showed the lowest weekly number of employee cases since mid-October when the vast majority of students were still learning remotely.
In the week that ended Friday, 14 of about 19,100 employees tested positive. That’s down from 24 the previous week and a high of 115 cases in mid-January, when community spread was rampant and in-person classes were temporarily canceled.
The declining case count comes amid the convergence of two trends: Most educators have had a chance to be fully vaccinated, and more students than ever are attending in person. In CMS and many surrounding districts, April 12 marked the first time middle and high schools opened under Plan A, with six-foot distancing no longer required.
Oakdale Elementary students returned to in-person classes for the second time in mid-February.
In the first semester of last school year, 3% of Oakdale Elementary School’s third-graders got a D or F in reading. That was before the pandemic.
This year, with a fluctuating mix of remote and in-person classes, 69% of Oakdale’s third-graders fell below a C.
That’s one of the more extreme swings, but data on classroom grades provided by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools shows many schools have taken dramatic hits on measures of academic performance during the pandemic. Almost always, they’re schools like Oakdale in north Charlotte, a high-poverty neighborhood school where more than 80% of students are Black or Hispanic.