Nell Holcomb School District extends fall break due to coronavirus

The Nell Holcomb School District in eastern Cape Girardeau County is lengthening its fall break by three days due to COVID-19 concerns.

The kindergarten-through-

eighth-grade district was scheduled to be on break through Tuesday but school officials now have extended the downtime through Nov. 6.

“A week ago, we had one student test positive (for coronavirus) and one staff member,” said Bleau Deckerd, in his second year as district superintendent.

“But we’ve had two positive results for teachers in the last 24 hours,” Deckerd said Wednesday, “and our student positives are up to three.”

Nell Holcomb will continue to serve as a polling place for the Nov. 3 general election.

“We expect 1,000 people to come through our doors to vote, and having the extra time to do a deep cleaning of our cafeteria will be helpful to keep everybody healthy,” Deckerd added.

Deckerd said the pandemic has hurt the 250-student district in another way.

“We lost a lot of (substitute) teachers this year,” he said, noting so many Nell Holcomb subs were retirees who are in the highest risk demographic group for novel coronavirus.

Deckerd said he expects classes to resume Nov. 9.