Freedom From Religion Foundation Closes Complaint Against Oconee County Schools After School Attorney Says Display Corrected

***OCS Response To Aug. 23 Complaint Dated Jan. 4***

The Freedom From Religion Foundation on Wednesday closed the file of a complaint against Oconee County Schools in August of last year for a religious display at Oconee County Middle School.

Phillip L. Hartley, attorney for Oconee County Schools, informed the Foundation on Tuesday that the display in question was part of a larger display by student groups.

Hartley said Oconee County Schools had not identified the Fellowship of Christian Athletes as the student group sponsoring the display “and that has now been corrected.”

Georgia Transportation Department Planning Public Outreach On SR 316 Intersection Upgrades

***Dates Not Yet Set***

The Georgia Department of Transportation is planning meetings both with local officials and with the public this spring to discuss interchange improvements along SR 316 in Oconee County.

Details of these meetings, which remain incomplete, were first announced by SueAnne Decker, District preconstruction engineer with the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) at a MACORTS Technical Coordinating Committee meeting on Oct. 27.

Freedom From Religion Foundation Evaluating Nonresponse By Oconee County Schools To Complaint About Religious Display

***Schools Acknowledge Receipt Of Foundation Request***

Attorneys at the Freedom From Religion Foundation are weighing how to respond to a lack of response from Oconee County Schools to a request that it remove a religious display at Oconee County Middle School.

The national foundation based in Madison, Wisc., wrote to Oconee County Schools Superintendent Jason Branch in August and again in late October asking him to reply and to indicate what he did “to remedy this constitutional violation.”

COVID-19 Cases Triple in Northeast Health District In Last Week; Area Hospitals Report Large Increase In Patients With Disease

***Oconee, Clarke Report Near Record Numbers Of Cases***

The 10-county Northeast Health District added 4,644 new cases of COVID-19 in the week ending on Friday, just more than three times the number added in the week ending on Dec. 24.

On Dec. 24, the number of cases had increased by just less than three times (2.8) over the week earlier.

The Northeast Health District added 11 deaths, compared with 13 a week earlier. One of those added deaths was of a 43-year-old woman in Clarke County without a chronic condition.

Oconee Elections Board Moves Forward With Consolidation Of Precincts; Citizens Have Chance To Comment

***Site For Early Voting In May Not Yet Determined***

The Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration voted unanimously in a called meeting last week to move forward with consolidation of eight precincts, reducing the total number of precincts in the county from 12 to eight.

Notices regarding the proposed changes will appear in the legal advertisements section of the Jan. 6 and 13 editions of The Oconee Enterprise, and citizens will have until Jan. 31 to comment on the proposed changes.

At a meeting on Jan. 31, the Board is expected to take action on the consolidation, which will become final once the Board acts.

COVID-19 Cases Soar In Oconee, Clarke Counties, Northeast Health District

***Confirmed Deaths From Disease Double***

The 10-county Northeast Health District added 1,538 new cases of COVID-19 in the week ending on Friday, nearly three times the number added in the week ending on Dec. 17.

The Northeast Health District added 13 deaths, more than double the number added on Friday a week ago.

The average number of added cases per day in the week ending on Friday was 219.7, compared with 77.3 on Dec. 17.

Oconee County added 118 new cases in the week ending on Friday, compared 33 in the week ending on Dec. 17.

Clarke County added 440 new cases in the week ending on Friday, compared with 106 in the week ending last Friday.

Rolling Averages

The seven-day rolling average of added cases in Oconee County on Friday per 100,000 population was 40.0, and it was 50.3 in Clarke County.

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Last week those rolling averages had been 9.9 in Oconee County and 12.1 in Clarke County.

The unstandardized rolling average of added cases in Oconee County on Friday was 16.7, compared with 4.1 on Friday of last week.

In Clarke County, the unstandardized seven-day rolling average of added cases on Friday was 64.7, compared with 15.3 on Friday of last week.

The confirmed COVID-19 deaths in the Northeast Health District in the last week were in Barrow (2), Elbert (1), Jackson (4), Madison (1), Morgan (3), and Walton (2) counties.

The Northeast Health District now has recorded 1,289 confirmed deaths from COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.

The Northeast Health District had 121 “probable” deaths from COVID-19 on Friday, up one from the week before. The added "probable" death was in Walton County.

These data are from the Friday Daily Status Report of the Department of Public Health.

The Department of Public Health no longer releases Daily Status Reports on weekends.

Oconee County Schools is not in session and released no report on COVID-19 cases on Friday.

University, Hospital Reports

The University of Georgia on Wednesday, in its COVID-19 Health and Exposure Updates, reported 49 positive COVID-19 tests, up from 22 in the report for the previous week.

The report covered the period of Dec. 13 to Dec. 19.

The University reported that 433 walk-in tests were performed on individuals by the University Health Center, up from 375 a week earlier, and 13 of the tests last week came back positive.

The positivity rate for the walk-in tests was 3.0 percent, compared with 0.8 percent a week earlier.

The Georgia Hospital Association and the Georgia Emergency Management Agency reported on Friday that the number of COVID-19 patients at area hospitals was 51, the same number as a week earlier.

The number of ICU beds in use was 57, down from 65 last week, and the number of adult ventilators in use was 36, up from 27 a week earlier.

The listed number of available ICU beds at area hospitals is 70.

Sarah Virginia Bell Honored A Year After Death With Ceremony At Harris Shoals Park In Watkinville

***Sisters Say Tree Planting A Fitting Remembrance***

Twenty people turned out at Watkinsville's Harris Shoals Park on Sunday to participate in the unveiling of a plaque to honor Sarah Virginia Bell, who passed away just less than a year ago after a fight with pancreatic cancer.

The plaque is at the base of a Flame Red Maple tree, which, even in the cold and overcast day late in the season, showed the color for which it is named.