MILTON-FREEWATER — Schools in Milton-Freewater have had to stop hosting small cohorts of students for in-person instruction due to a Umatilla County increase in COVID-19 cases.

Superintendent Aaron Duff announced the change that began this week.

He said the program was mainly for students who have special needs or who cannot access their online education. Closing schools to these students again was not something he wanted to do, but the increase in area COVID-19 cases gave him no choice.

“We were able to bring these kids in for about four weeks,” Duff said. But when case numbers increased and the school district checked in (Nov. 2) with the county health officials as required, “they said we needed to pause.”

The number requiring the district to consult the health officials is 200 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents for a 14-day period. According to the latest numbers released by the Oregon Health Authority, Umatilla County’s number per 100,000 residents is 274.8.

Duff said he regrets the strain the absence of in-school instruction will put on the district’s most at-need students, but staff will do what it can to keep supporting them.

“We have different things available,” Duff said. “We have some call-in tutor options. But to be perfectly honest, we do the best that we can do but there are groups of students that distance learning does not work with. And unfortunately right now, we aren’t able to do anything other than distance learning.”

Duff said he hopes, for the sake of students, that conditions will change soon.

“There are some kids doing really well with distance learning. But for some kids, it is not working. It just isn’t,” he said. “We’ve seen that and it’s really unfortunate.”

New COVID-19 numbers are released by the Oregon Health Authority each Monday. Duff said he will be in constant contact with Umatilla County health officials about when limited in-person instruction can resume.

Under current guidelines, limited in-person allows cohorts of up to 20 students to attend in-person instruction for up to two hours a day. The standard was part of the state’s updated return-to-school plan.

Under the new guidelines, once a district’s county reaches fewer than 100 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents over a 14-day period, students can start transitioning to a hybrid schedule, starting with kindergarten through third grades, then fourth and fifth grades.

Middle and high school students can be phased in “if elementary schools can demonstrate the ability to limit transmission in the school environment,” the guidelines state.

Once a county reaches fewer than 50 COVID-19 cases over a 14-day period, all students may return to either full-time, in-person learning, or to a hybrid schedule.