Students at Simmons Elementary School were moved to all-virtual Wednesday after four students tested positive for the coronavirus, schools Superintendent Scott Hawkins told the Sun Tuesday. “We do have multiple cases right now in a classroom at Simmons … which is resulting in several quarantines with students and staff,” Hawkins said. According to the district’s self-reported COVID-19 data for Monday, Jan. 25, Simmons had 31 students and 10 staff in quarantine. Hawkins said other schools in the district will continue in-person instruction, with middle and high school students continuing on their Tuesday-Thursday and Wednesday-Friday hybrid model. “… We can target specific schools, and that’s us being able to respond as situations arise,” Hawkins said. He acknowledged, when in-person learning resumed last fall and again after the holidays, “We knew there were going to be cases. We knew there were going to be quarantines,” given the high number of students, teachers and staff in a school. Hawkins said students at Simmons Elementary will remain in virtual learning for the rest of this week and at least next Monday and Tuesday. “We will reevaluate Monday to see if we need to do anything any differently; if we need to extend it or if we’ll be able to get back in … (next) Wednesday,” he said. The decision to move Simmons to all-virtual, rather than move one class to virtual, was based on the fact that there were multiple cases in one class and those students had contact with several staff members who work with kids in other classes, Hawkins explained. He said the decision to pause in-person learning at Simmons was made in consultation with the Woodford County Health Department. “They were in agreement and felt like the steps that we were taking were the right steps,” he said. Hawkins said teachers have pivoted from in-person to virtual instruction since school resumed in the fall, so they are able to adjust as needed. “They’ve done it. So they know how to do it,” he said. The decision to move Simmons to all-virtual was made on Tuesday morning and parents were informed beginning at about noon, Hawkins said. He said Simmons will continue being sanitized at night while students are not in the building because some teachers may want to do their remote instruction there. Besides sanitizing school buildings at night, Hawkins said the district is following all the Healthy at School guidelines. “You’re just taking steps,” he said, “to ensure that we’re doing everything we can to respond to the situation that we’re in.” “Unfortunately, this virus can spread very easily, and we’ve seen that over the last 10 months,” Hawkins said. “And really this is the first time that we’ve dealt with this (multiple cases in one classroom) in all of the time that we’ve been in school (10 weeks). So I think that speaks to the level of our protocols and the procedures that we have in place.”