Two more cases of COVID-19 have been reported at The Villages Charter School, where 63 percent of all cases in the Sumter County School District have been identified.
The latest cases were reported on Oct. 16, which brought the total number of positive results among students at the school to 27. The charter school largely educates children of the Developer’s family, Villages employees and those who work in various businesses in the sprawling retirement mecca.
The charter school is the only public school in Sumter County to identify new cases every week since school started at the end of August. Five cases were reported last week and eight were identified the previous week, according to the Sumter County Schools website.
All told, the Sumter County School District is reporting 46 cases among students. South Sumter High School has the second most cases in the district with six, followed by Webster Elementary School and South Sumter Middle School with three apiece.
The Villages Charter School last week reversed course after it had stopped reporting new cases of COVID-19 to the Sumter School District in favor of apparently just reporting them to the Developer-owned Daily Sun. That decision came in the same week with the eight positive results, several of which involved members of The Villages High School football team and forced the cancellation of games with Leesburg High School and South Sumter High School. The outbreak also forced about 80 students into quarantine.
At the time, a Sumter County Schools official said the district stopped receiving the charter school’s numbers for students – the school wasn’t reporting staff numbers since they aren’t district employees – after being informed that they were “doing their own contact tracing and exclusions.” That decision drew the ire of many Villages-News.com readers who commented on the original story after it was published on Saturday, Oct. 10.
