HOUSTON COUNTY, Ga. — Since heading back to the classroom on August 6, the Houston County school system has seen 77 students test positive for COVID-19.
But, a little over a month later, their numbers seem to be slowing down.
Amanda Flippen in Warner Robins says she's still happy with her decision to send her four boys back to school.
"Honestly it's been going really easy. We haven't had any issues," she said.
She says they haven't gotten any calls about COVID-19 cases at Perdue Elementary or Perdue Primary.
"As far as we know, both schools that we are dealing with, neither one of them have been exposed," Flippen said.
But that's not the case for Matthew Knowles or Caly Hess.
"We've gotten a call from the school almost every week that someone has been tested positive," Knowles said. "It’s still smooth for the most part. It’s just all those phone calls that we keep getting that make us worried."
Knowles says so far, none of his kids have been directly affected, but he feels it's just a matter of time. He says one of his kids is considering switching to virtual learning at the end of the semester.
Every week, Houston County releases a weekly count of positive COVID-19 cases.
Between August 6 and the 18, the school system says 32 students tested positive.
Then, on the 25, they had 21 cases.
As of September 1, 15 students and then on the 4, four students.
The most recent count on September 11 showed five students tested positive.
They've also had 19 on-site staff members test positive since the start of the school year.
The numbers appear to be slowing down, which is keeping Superintendent Mark Scott optimistic.
"It really points to some of the mitigation strategies that we are using," Scott said.
But, he knows they can't relax just yet.
"As the numbers have gotten lower, we just can't become complacent. We've got to remain diligent with the protocols and the mitigation strategy," he said.
He says they are asking parents to let their school know if a student is getting a test, instead of waiting to tell someone when they actually get the result.
"We just want to be proactive instead of having to be reactive," Scott said.
Caly Hess' son is at Veteran's High School and she says even with those numbers slowing, she is still uneasy.
"He says that at least in his school they are trying very very hard to keep masks as part of it. Social distancing is non-existent. They cannot. There's too many kids in the school," Hess said.
She says they've gotten four calls so far from Veterans notifying them of a positive case.
Just like Knowles' kids, her son hasn't been directly affected, yet.
"It made me real nervous, all these call outs and, as I said, we thought the schools were gonna shut down by now."
She says she would feel better if instead of releasing just a total number of positive cases each week, they would show how many cases are in each school, so parents and staff could see where the clusters are and what to look for.
"Try to mitigate the risk by improving issues at that particular school, figuring out what that particular school is, and still we’re just seeing overalls, right?" she said.
Just to put those numbers from the school system into a little more context, Houston County has a little over 20,000 students enrolled in in-person learning, so those 77 students who have tested positive are less than one half of one percent of the student population.