According to the Callaway County Health Department website, there are 309 active COVID-19 cases as of Friday.
Not only has the county itself seen an uptick in cases, but the school districts as well.
Fulton Public Schools had to shut down Jan. 18 due to staffing shortages. By Wednesday, they were able to reopen all buildings except Bush Elementary. All buildings were open by Thursday.
"Friday we were still short a number of staff members," FPS Superintendent Ty Crain said. "But we're working together. The staff has really stepped up, and gone above and beyond in order to make sure that we can get coverage and supervision and be able to effectively operate the buildings."
Though Fulton has seen a spike in COVID-19 cases with 44 currently positive, it's the combination of the spike and the typical cold and flu season.
"We actually have more staff that were out just because of illness," Crain said. "Not that they were positive for COVID. It was just flu bug or stomach bug or some other type of illness. We typically have that this time of year, but then when you put the COVID on top of it, that's what really kind of pushed us over the edge. We have staff that would be eligible to return but some of them it sticks around a little bit longer, and they're not feeling well enough to return."
New Bloomfield School District also had to shut down last week.
"The past two weeks, New Bloomfield has seen a spike in numbers from both students and staff," Superintendent Sarah Wisdom said. "We found ourselves short on substitutes prior to this spike, so it has created a perfect storm. This, along with the health of our students and staff have moved us into our phase red."
Last week, the district had 30 positive COVID-19 cases.
"We are monitoring cases throughout the weekend, but it is our plans to have students back in seat on Tuesday," Wisdom said. "A deep cleaning of all buildings will also take place."
Though South Callaway School District has been fortunate when it comes to positive cases, it too saw an increase with 35 positive cases as of Friday.
"We started having a COVID spike," South Callaway Superintendent Kevin Hillman said. "We really haven't ever had big numbers. But the last week, that really spiked. We had several positive cases to the point we did shut down school for one day because we had enough staff gone. We weren't even sure we would have the bus drivers to get the kids to school."
All three districts have been hit by the pandemic and have seen an increase in positive cases and decreases in their staff. But their end goals are all the same -- to find a way to keep children in school but also keep them safe.
"We're no exception," Crain said. "It's taking its toll on everybody. Our building administrators have to get creative, our teachers step up and cover for other teachers. We do everything we can to make sure we can have kids here and keep our doors open effectively, and do what we can with the kids as far as educating them."
Hillman is taking a similar approach.
"We try to be in school if there's any way that we can because I feel like we learned students need to be in school," Hillman said. "Long periods of time out is not good for most kids, and with that being said we will never put anyone at a risk. If our numbers are going so high we feel like we have situation, or we don't have enough staff to be able to teach our kids, or get them to school, or feed them we'll go to remote learning for however long we need to. And that might be a day, or it might be two or three, whatever it may be in order to get ourselves back to take care of them. So, for the near future that is how those things are going to be handled. We want to have in-person learning, but if we need to have a couple of days of remote learning we're prepared for that."
Schools are hoping to return somewhat to normal this week, and will continue monitoring cases and Return to Learn plans.