Western Christian School closes for a week after 12 Covid cases
Al Stefan, superintendent of Western Christian School, stands inside the main hallway on June 1, 2021 (Rachel Alexander/Salem Reporter)
A private school in west Salem has shut down classes for a week after a total of 12 students and employees tested positive for Covid.
Western Christian School superintendent Al Stefan said he made the decision Sunday because of both the number of cases and the difficulty finding substitute teachers to cover classes.
“We had quite a few cases in different pockets of our school,” Stefan said.
The school closure is the first Salem Reporter is aware of in the Salem area since classes began this fall. No schools in the Salem-Keizer School District have shut down due to Covid, though one kindergarten class at Chapman Hill Elementary School moved online for a week after a student tested positive for Covid.
Western Christian has about 370 students and serves grades K-12.
Stefan said he wasn’t asked to close the school by Polk County’s public health department, but thought it was the best thing to do because of the contagiousness of the Delta variant and the difficulty in determining where people got sick with the virus so widespread.
“It’s really hard to trace it to where they got it. We think maybe there’s a couple that got it here at school,” he said. “There’s no way for us to really figure that out. We just knew we had too many cases at once so it’s like, let’s just give everyone a breather.”
Stefan said the school requires masks and follows other state guidelines for preventing the spread of Covid, including keeping kids at least three feet apart when possible.
“This Delta variant, it’s a lot different than last year,” he said.
Stefan said the school would likely add a make-up week at the end of the year.
-Rachel Alexander
