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Saranac Lake 11th and 12th grades go remote

SARANAC LAKE — Students in grades 11 and 12 at Saranac Lake High School will be learning remotely today, and possibly until the end of the week, after several students on three different sports teams tested positive for COVID-19 over the weekend.

Superintendent Diane Fox said these grade levels will be remote until the end of this week but may return to regular in-person learning sooner, if contact tracing shows transmission of the virus has not happened. Currently, it is unclear how many students have tested positive or been exposed, so she said the school is going remote until that can be determined.

“We appreciate the families who are reaching out to us to let us know that their child is in quarantine or symptomatic,” Fox said. “But we’re just feeling like we don’t have a handle on that.”

Fox said the students on three of the district’s six high-risk sports teams tested positive after coming into contact with positive people outside of school. There is not currently a spread within the district, she said.

“We are hearing of some community spread,” Fox said. “We have some cases in-house that have been identified by our pool testing of athletes.”

The school has been running girls junior varsity and varsity basketball; boys junior varsity and varsity basketball; boys hockey and girls hockey, all of which are high-risk sports the state recently allowed to restart.

Fox said these sports are also on hold for now. They may restart in the future.

Fox said the district is going to “let this play out” and see how significant the spread is.

“Maybe it’s not as large as it’s sounding and we can come back. Maybe it is as large as it is sounding and we’re going to look at what we can do to stop the spread,” Fox said.

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