St. Bernard’s School students make Halloween cards for those who are homebound while masked and distanced at their desks. The school recently has been keeping students further apart when at work, to avoid having to shut down because of coronavirus quarantines. (Provided photo — Andrea Kilbourne-Hill)

SARANAC LAKE — As community spread of the coronavirus remains high in the Tri-Lakes, St. Bernard’s School is requiring masks in more places and enforcing its social distancing procedures more strictly.

The school is having students wear masks during recess outdoors, though the state does not require this anymore, and is making sure students sit and stand three feet apart.

School Principal Andrea Kilbourne-Hill said these measures are needed to keep kids in classes.

“At this point, we need the kids in school,” she said. “If you have to go out for 10 days for every kid that tests positive, that’s a lot of days out.”

Last year, she said the school operated as normal, just while wearing masks. Only one student tested positive in the whole year, during a break, so it had no impact on classes.

This year, she said there are more COVID-19 cases at the school than she ever thought was possible. The virus has mutated and produced new variants, which are more contagious to young people, who are not yet eligible for the vaccine which reduces the hazardous symptoms of the virus.

“We realized that this new normal of incredibly high community transmission was not going to be conducive for learning for our students if we don’t change the way that we’re doing things,” Kilbourne-Hill said.

There were two positive cases in the first month of classes, several students have had to quarantine and the school took two days off of classes in mid-October to recalibrate.

“Luckily, no one was very sick,” Kilbourne-Hill said.

She said there was no spread within the school, so mitigation was working. But she said they want to be prepared, so when there’s a new positive case, they don’t have close contact with other students.

Kilbourne-Hill said last year, lots of things were shut down and people were wearing masks and social distancing in the community.

This year, people are living life more-or-less back to normal outside of schools, she said.

“The community transmission rate is just so incredibly high,” she said. “And everything is open.”

Currently, there are a few students in quarantine after coming into contact with positive people outside of the school, and there is one student who has tested positive.

Eventually, the school will relax these stricter rules, she said, but the community transmission rate needs to drop first.

“It’s too bad that we’re still having to do this,” she said. “Everything else in the world is open, but we have to tighten down because it’s our kids that can’t get vaccinated yet.”

Kilbourne-Hill said it feels unfair to students, and they notice the difference, but it’s just a new procedure for them to follow. She said teachers teach students new rules to follow all the time — how to line up in the hallways or turn a paper in the right way.

“It’s not that different. It’s just one added step to the day,” she said. “They are totally happy and fine with it. Honestly? They just want to be in school. … I’m watching them play soccer right now. They’re fine. They roll with it.”

She added that parents have told the school it should do whatever it needs to keep their kids in classes.

Kilbourne-Hill said it will be helpful when younger children are allowed to get vaccinated. Children 12 and older have been able to get the vaccine for several months now. Last week, the FDA approved children 5 to 11 to get the Pfizer and BioNTech shots.

In the meantime, the school is pool testing students every week and enforcing three feet of distancing.