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Area health departments are ready to monitor COVID-19 among
students when school resumes. In
this 2020 image, a student answers a
question during a summer STEM camp in Wylie, Texas.AP
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Cleveland Plain Dealer
What are Northeast Ohio schools with in-person classes planning for when they have outbreaks of COVID-19?
By Julie Washington
Aug 21
CLEVELAND, Ohio — In the coming weeks, students throughout Northeast
Ohio will return to the classroom for the first time since March when
Gov. Mike DeWine ordered school across the state to close to head off
the growing spread of COVID-19.
The governor left the responsibility to figure out how to re-open
schools to individual districts raising concerns and questions about
what happens when schools become hot-spots for COVID-19 transmission.
How will schools handle sick kids, or decide when an outbreak is so
massive that in-person instruction should end?
The answers run the gamut leaving superintendents and county health officials staring down a host of unknowns.
“I feel like we’re going into a big experiment,” said Joan Hall,
epidemiology coordinator in the communicable disease unit of Summit
County Public Health. “There are a lot of unknowns and question marks.”
Steve Thompson, superintendent of the Willoughby-Eastlake City Schools, admitted that he’s worried.
“Anyone not entering this with trepidation either is not honest with
themselves or unwise,” Thompson said. “I have concerns. We’re going to
monitor this very, very closely.”
Brecksville-Broadview Heights school district expects “flare-ups” of
COVID-19 at the school this fall, the district warned on its website.
In extreme cases, entire school buildings may be closed for cleaning,
or because of high levels of illness among students and staff, the
district said.
Most Northeast Ohio schools plan to start the fall semester with online
learning. Those welcoming students to in-person education — either a
5-days-a week or a hybrid model — have worked closely with their county
health boards and the Ohio Department of Health to develop protocols,
guidelines and rules for every possibility.
Schools currently planning to offer some in-person instruction for the
first semester include Chardon, Willoughby-Eastlake,
Brecksville-Broadview Heights, Mentor, Medina and Chagrin Falls.
Other districts plan to use a hybrid educational model that allows one
group of students to attend school in-person two days a week and online
three days a week. The second group of students attends school in
person two different days of the week and online three days a week.
Each district has written its policies with recommendations from the
Ohio Department of Education, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, the Ohio Health Department and the state.
Plans for dealing with COVID-19 cases include isolating students or
staff who test positive, closing and cleaning areas of the school that
may have been contaminated by the sick person and quarantining close
contacts.
Willoughby-Eastlake has elaborate flow charts on its website,
delineating what will happen if an employee or student has COVID-19
symptoms, a student has contact with a person with COVID-19, or a
student has symptoms at home or at school. The flow charts divide out
tasks for the building principal, staff, custodial services, district
office, parents and students.
“We want to make sure we are being transparent and open with the community,” Thompson said about the flow charts.
In Willoughby-Eastlake middle and high schools, if a student tests
positive, students and staff in that student’s classes will be
quarantined for 14 days. If there are two positive persons, the school
closes for a 14-day quarantine, and all students move to remote
learning, the district said.
If local health officials say that fewer people in the same class as a
COVID-19-positive person can be quarantined, the school will do that,
according to Thompson.
In Chagrin Falls Exempted Village Schools, adults or children exposed
to the illness can return to school after a 14-day quarantine. Those
who test positive for COVID-19 must stay out of school for at least 10
days since symptom onset, the district said.
In the Medina City Schools, nursing staff from Akron Children’s
Hospital will be in the schools daily, and school clinics will become
isolation areas for students and staff who show COVID-19 symptoms.
Contact tracing and quarantine
Contact tracing is an essential tool in slowing the spread of COVID-19,
Hall said. Researchers are finding that young people do spread the
illness, but often don’t have symptoms.
People considered high-risk contacts include anyone who came within six
feet of a person with COVID-19 for 15 minutes or more. It’s easy to see
how this creates ripple effects inside a class or team, and how many
people could potentially be considered high-risk contacts.
Local health departments will know before school districts about
children who test positive for COVID-19, said Tom Quade, health
commissioner for Geauga Public Health Department.
Medical labs report positive COVID-19 tests to the state database,
where local health departments look for local cases daily, Quade said.
Contact tracers will call the child’s parents to get a list of any
contacts the child had with people outside of school, and the name of
the child’s school.
Contact tracers, who work for local health departments, will contact
schools. Administrators and teachers will supply information about
other students in affected classes and extracurricular activities,
Quade said.
A high-risk contact’s quarantine period would start from that date of
exposure and end after 14 days. COVID-19 testing is recommended if the
high-risk contact develops symptoms during the quarantine period, Hall
said.
If a high-risk contact develops symptoms or tests positive, then they
would stop quarantine and move to isolation, Hall said. Isolation lasts
for 10 days following the date of symptom onset, or testing date if the
person is asymptomatic, Hall said. The isolation ends after 10 days,
but only if symptoms are improving.
People in quarantine who test negative frequently want to know if they can end quarantine.
“They still need to complete the quarantine, as the test result
only indicates their COVID-19 status on the day the specimen is
collected,” Hall said. “A person who tests negative could then test
positive 2-3 days later, for example (due to the incubation period of
2-14 days).”
Not all parents are cooperating with contact tracing efforts. Quade
heard about an Ohio county where the parent of a child with COVID-19
refused to answer questions so that players on the ill child’s football
team would not get quarantined and miss games.
“The game was more important than a person’s awareness that they have been exposed” to COVID-19, Quade said.
When to shift to online learning or closing buildings
How will schools decide that an outbreak is so big that it needs to
close buildings, or possibly move the entire district to online
learning? Many districts are using the state’s color-coded coronavirus
warning system to guide those decisions.
The map devised by DeWine assigns colors and alert levels to counties
based on several risk factors. The highest levels are red, or Level 3,
and purple, or Level 4.
If Lake County were a “red, or Level 3” county, all school buildings
would close to students and all students would be taught remotely,
Willoughby-Eastlake’s Thompson said in an online letter. Thompson noted
that Lake County health officials recommended that move.
Mentor City Schools said it would quickly switch to district-wide
remote learning if Lake County entered the red or purple alert level.
When Cuyahoga County is red, Brecksville-Broadview Heights will go to a
hybrid learning model, with one group of students attending school
in-person two days a week and online three days a week. A second group
of students would attend school in person two days a week and online
three days a week.
If Cuyahoga County reaches purple or level 4, all Brecksville-Broadview Heights students would learn remotely.
If outbreaks become too severe, school districts might be faced with
the decision between keeping in-person instruction or switching all
students to online learning. Schools already have standards for when to
close when absenteeism due to flu and other diseases rises high, Hall
said.
The inability to have enough teachers could lead to building closures,
Thompson said. The district relies heavily on retired teachers as
substitutes, but many have said that they don’t want to teach during
the pandemic.
In the past, classes that lacked teachers would be divided up and sent
to other teachers, but that won’t be possible this year due to social
distancing, Thompson said.
Chagrin Falls will review the number of COVID-19 cases in the district,
and absenteeism among staff and students, every two weeks to decide if
it should move to distance learning only
Outbreaks are not a reflection on the ability of one educational plan
over another to keep COVID-19 at bay. “No plan eliminates the risk.
It’s a risky venture,” Quade said.
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