MISSOULA — There are more than a dozen active COVID-19 cases within Missoula County Public Schools District.
Administrators examined data gathered from other communities during Tuesday night's school board meeting to indicate how MCPS schools are handling the coronavirus pandemic.
MCPS Superintendent Rob Watson said these numbers -- along with studies from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Harvard Global Health Institute -- will help the district navigate their transition into the next phase when that time comes.
Watson also shared some new numbers with the school board noting that as of Monday there were 16 active cases within the District. He also noted that 70% of the cases were transmitted outside of the school setting.
Additionally, MCPS is now conducting its own contact tracing for any case associated with the district. Watson also repeated that MCPS staffing continues to be a major issue.
“What we've seen is, you know, it's really through no fault of our own -- just the fact that we've got more cases in the building,” Watson said.
“You see more staff that have had to quarantine and that's what you see in some of these situations where we might have shut down a program temporarily or shut down a school temporarily is because of a staffing issue,” he added.
No decisions regarding the MCPS schedule were made on Tuesday night, but the data and discussion that followed will be used to determine appropriate school phases for in-person learning down the road.