The Orange County Public School district is reporting its largest new case count following the return of students from winter break.

While that number is cumulative from cases reported over the 2-week winter break, Superintendent Dr. Barbara Jenkins said the district is seeing an increase in teachers calling out sick.

Jenkins said there was a "severe" rise in sick calls from staff after the winter break. 

She said Tuesday during a COVID-19 press briefing that about 5% of their 14,000 teachers — 703 in total — had called out sick. 

The OCPS COVID-19 dashboard showed that as of Monday, 309 employees had tested positive. 

Along with them, 866 students tested positive during the winter break.

The cases were spread out among many OCPS schools, with the highest number being reported from Lake Nona High school, at 84 cases over the break. 

Jenkins said the high number of cases prompted them to make masks mandatory for all adults on school campuses, visitors or otherwise. 

She also said principals had plans in place to cope with teacher shortages going forward. 

"On each campus there are resource teachers, there are individuals who are certified but work outside of the classroom, and for the most part those individuals were reassigned inside the classrooms to make sure that we had coverage," Jenkins said. 

District officials have said that while they don’t encourage people to keep students home from school, any parents who choose to do that won’t have their children counted absent as long as they can keep up with their school work from home. 

Jenkins said the best thing parents can do is keep their kids home from school if they don't feel well.