Some schools in Orange County have had so many teachers self-isolating from home that they have had to place students to learn together in the gym. 

But Orange County Public Schools stated it was necessary to meet the needs of parents. 

When Jennifer Kline and her family moved to Orange County last summer, they came from a place where campuses were still shut down.

She was excited to be able to send her 8th-grade daughter back to a classroom.

“She has a really hard time learning virtually, she really likes face to face,” Kline said. 

Things were going fine until this week.

“Four of her teachers on Wednesday were being quarantined, and she would have to spend a good majority of her day in the gym, doing her classes on the computer,” she said. 

Which Kline says was not a good environment for her daughter to learn in.

Horizon West Middle School, in Windermere, currently has 74 students and nine employees quarantined.
Earlier in the week, the school had as many as 13 employees self-isolating.

Kline says she does not understand why they keep the school open when it could have closed others in Orange County with less quarantine orders.

“It is absolutely confusing … I’m unsure what their threshold is for taking the school from face to face to fully virtual,” she said. 

Spectrum News 13 took her question to the Florida Department of Health in Orange County, which advises the school board when to do a temporary shutdown.

“With regard to a threshold, there is no one from our end. In the sense that the large number of people in quarantine is not necessarily an expression of severity of the outbreak in a specific place,” said Health Officer for the Florida Department of Health in Orange County Dr. Raul Pino. 

The school board ultimately makes the call on whether to temporarily close a school campus.

And Chief Communications Officer for Orange County Public Schools Scott Howat says they make those decisions on a case-by-case basis with the principals.

“And I talked to the leadership from the school … they felt like they had enough support to not have to pivot a grade level or school,” Howat said. 

He says they want to keep the schools open as much as possible for those who cannot afford to keep their kids home.

Kline told Spectrum News 13 that since bringing this to the attention of her daughter’s principal, they have been great at being flexible, allowing her daughter to learn from home for the first half of the day.