The mandated two-day closure of Sheffield Area Elementary School and Sheffield Area Middle High School has done its thing.

“We are all set to open on Thursday,” Warren County School District Superintendent Amy Stewart said Wednesday.

“As a district, we had to sign an Attestation in December stating in order to offer in-person learning we had to ‘attest’ to following certain mandates,” Stewart said. “We must follow and enforce the masking mandate, and we must follow a specific chart as to when to administer a ‘targeted closure’ of a building due to COVID-19 numbers.”

When Sheffield’s COVID numbers hit that threshold Monday night, Stewart announced that the schools would have to close for two days and pivot to remote learning.

“During that time of closure, we are expected to handle all our communication regarding the positive or probable case, do all the contact tracing and do a top-to-bottom cleaning of the building,” she said.

Reaching the threshold at Sheffield didn’t take many cases.

“The ‘targeted closure’ thresholds are very low for our small schools,” Stewart said. “It only takes two cases within a 14-day period to close most of our schools.”

That is not the case in the central attendance area schools with larger populations, but the number there is still not very high.

“WAEC, Beaty and WAHS are larger in population, so it takes four cases within a 14-day period to close them down,” she said. “There are a lot of details about each case that must be considered, but our Pandemic Team monitors the big picture carefully each day, and the building principals are making sure their schools are ready to make a quick switch to remote if necessary.”

While going to remote learning is not ideal, the district is in a better position than most in the nation.

“We received data last week indicating only 20 percent of schools in the U.S. are open to in-person learning for all students who want to attend five days a week,” Stewart said. “These two-day ‘targeted closures’ are less than ideal, but we don’t have a choice. This is part of what we must do right now in order to continue to allow in-person learning in the Warren County School District.”