WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) — A group of Fairview High School parents and students came together Monday to ask Williamson County School Board officials to reopen the school and allow extracurricular activities to resume.

“The opportunity to play sports at these schools is pushing me to be better in school, a better athlete, and better man,” one student said.

That senior football player says competing gives him a shot at a scholarship.

Earlier this month, the county health department asked the board to shut down Fairview High School, including in-person classes and sports, until September 28.

Parent Biff Curtis spoke last week at an organized rally outside school.

“They’re using a threshold or metric that they use during flu season,” Curtis said. “They’ve arbitrarily made a decision against Fairview to sideline the students and the kids that are participating in extracurriculars.”

The district reported 28 positive cases of COVID-19 at Fairview, dropping the school’s attendance to 67%.

A district spokesperson shared this statement on the decision with News 2:

“For the first time, the health department has asked us to close a campus-based on the spread of the virus in one of our schools.”

From the parking lot rally to the board meeting, Curtis took further concerns to leaders over false positives, even asking the district to break from health department guidelines. 

“If the school board is going to abide by health department protocols for quarantine and closures, it must be conditional on a confirmed second positive test,” Curtis said. 

An additional parent lobbied for anti-body testing among the students.