COVID outbreak forces cancellation of events

By CHARITY SMITH

csmith@yourdailyglobe.com

Bessemer — An outbreak of COVID-19 within the Bessemer Area School district has forced the cancellation of multiple events, according to district superintendent Dan Niemi.

The district was forced to cancel three football games and a scrimmage that were scheduled between Oct. 4 and Oct. 15. The junior high football game against Lake Linden-Hubbell scheduled for Oct. 5 was cancelled, along with today’s junior varsity football scrimmage against Mellen, Wisconsin. The varsity football games that were scheduled for Oct. 8 against Crystal Falls Forest Park and Oct. 15 against Powers North Central were also canceled.

“Our football game Friday was canceled because we didn’t want to get Crystal Falls in a bind like two weeks out when they go to playoffs and the same thing for our game this week; it is canceled,” Niemi told the Daily Globe on Monday.

He said some of the athletes on the Gogebic Miners co-op team with Wakefield-Marenisco have been affected by the outbreak. Niemi said that by canceling the games in advance, it allowed enough time for the opponents to pick up a different opponent for those games.

“We didn’t want to risk anybody else’s season,” said Niemi. “We know that this is on us. So, we just made sure that everybody is in a good spot and everybody should be able to return for the last game of the season versus Ironwood in Ironwood (on Oct. 22.).”

The Bessemer Area Schools mandated that all students and staff be masked as of Oct. 7 last week. The mandate will remain in effect through Oct. 22.

“We want to make sure that everybody is safe – the community, the kids and the staff,” said Niemi on Friday. “We’re identifying the problem. We’re making sure we know whose got problems.”

Niemi said that the virus had hit the school district “a little hard.” He said that approximately 15% of the student body was affected by the virus, either because of being infected directly or having to quarantine at home because of contact tracing. This equates to approximately 57 out of 380 students.

“Hopefully the big wave has passed,” Niemi told the Daily Globe on Monday.

The outbreak also forced the cancellation of the fall choir concert which was planned for Oct. 18. It will not be rescheduled. Niemi said the concert had been added to the schedule as the new choir teacher, Brianna Foreman, wanted to start a fall performance. The first choir concert will be the Christmas concert.

Niemi said some of the kids who have been quarantined are also in choir, and are set to return to school on Oct. 18, “So it just didn’t work out,” Niemi said.

Niemi said the school days still count for the district as long as they have 75% in attendance and they are “way over” that. He said students who are absent from in-person learning due to contact tracing are able to attend class via Zoom and pick up packets from the office.

“We are still well above the threshold (for days to count). So we’re doing OK,” Niemi said.

The district is working with the Western U.P. Health Department which has conducted a lot of contact tracing, Niemi said. He said the district is being “very cautious.”

“We ended up tightening up all our precautions here a little bit,” said Niemi. “We are going to have a two-week mask period where the kids are all wearing masks just to get through the Delta varient.”

He said that the building underwent a deep cleaning on Friday while the students were off for a teacher inservice day.

Niemi said all athletic teams are being tested before they go to a competition and other schools have been contacted and informed of the situation. When students ask for a test, they are given one, but 95-98% of the time “they’ve just got a cold,” he said.

“That’s just the nature of the beast, especially with what we’ve gone through in the last year and a half,” Niemi said. “We’re just making sure we are safe for the kids and the community. The community being the whole western end of the U.P. We don’t want people running around that are positive and spreading it all over the place.”

He said the issue has caused school superintendents in the region to take a lot of flak. He said people have been using some rather “colorful language” towards them.

“It’s pretty ugly, what’s going on,” he said. “People get pretty angry and they call and they use a lot of very colorful expletives to describe us and say what we are.”

After the two weeks, Niemi said they will reevaluate the situation and “hopefully” go back to “loosening it up a bit.” He said he is hopeful that the measures the district have taken will help to prevent furthering the spread of the virus.