11 SLC school teachers miss 1st day due to COVID-19 exposure at training event
Aug 25, 2021, 7:15 PM | Updated: 9:30 pm
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Nearly a dozen teachers in the Salt Lake City School District missed the first day of school due to possible exposure to COVID-19, the district confirmed to KSL-TV.
Approximately 300 of the district’s teachers received potential exposure letters after attending a back-to-school teacher training at Highland High School last Tuesday and Wednesday.
“A couple days after we had at least one teacher who was in our main auditorium test positive for COVID,” said Jason Olsen, spokesperson for the Salt Lake City School District.
The district found out about the positive case late in the weekend and conducted contact tracing. On Monday, it notified the teachers who were potentially exposed.
Of the approximately 300 teachers who received the letters, only 11 requested to quarantine and missed the first day of school yesterday.
“Fortunately, in our district, a large majority of our employees are vaccinated and many on that specific day at that teacher training many were wearing masks as well,” Olsen said.
The 11 teachers who are quarantining at home didn’t cause a disruption to the start of school since the district was able to easily find substitute teachers, Olsen explained.
“We just want to make sure that students and parents understand that we’re taking this seriously,” Olsen said. “There wasn’t any exposure to students.”
Due to concerns about COVID-19, the format of the teacher training was modified to limit exposure. Olsen didn’t have an exact number of attendees but said the district has 1,420 teachers and that a “good number” of them attended the training at Highland High School.
“Not all of our teachers were in that one room,” Olsen said. “We had actually broken that up into several different rooms and it was being broadcast to all those different rooms because we wanted to make sure not everybody was in the same place.”
