Students at the Limestone Community School will not attend in-person classes for two days after an elementary school student was deemed a presumed case of COVID-19.
Limestone Community students will learn remotely on Monday and Tuesday pending the result of the student’s test, Principal Ben Lothrop said in a letter to parents, guardians and the community on Friday.
The student with the probable case had been in class that week, but not on Friday, Lothrop said. He expected the results of the student’s test to be available early next week.
Lothrop said the school would contact anyone deemed a close contact of a positive case, but it would not begin that process until the student with the probable case tests positive for COVID-19.
As schools across Aroostook County — including SAD 1 schools in Presque Isle, SAD 45 schools in Washburn and Van Buren District School — go remote because of COVID-19 cases within their walls, Lothrop said he was unsurprised by the probable case.
“Unfortunately, I suspected this was coming,” Lothrop. “I ask for everyone to have patience and understanding, and we will get through this.”
The school had closed for in-person learning twice in the last two months as a result of positive COVID-19 tests at nearby schools: for a few days in October as a result of a positive COVID-19 test at Maine School of Science and Mathematics — later found to be a false positive — and for a few weeks in November because of two positive cases at Caribou Technology Center.
A region largely unaffected by COVID-19 through most of the pandemic, coronavirus cases have shot up in Aroostook County in the past weeks, though it continues to have the lowest case rate of any county in Maine.
There were 188 total cases in Aroostook County as of Sunday, with 68 active cases, according to Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention data. Only 1-5 of those total cases have been in Limestone as of Nov. 29, while nearby Caribou has seen 21.
Limestone Community School contains about 135 students in preschool through eighth grade.
