TYLER, Texas — With school already underway in parts of East Texas and starting soon for others, many parents carefully weighed the decision to send their children back on campus or back to virtual learning. That's not a choice anyone takes lightly when you consider that in four short weeks, coronavirus cases in children soared 90% in the U.S.
The American Academy of Pediatrics reports almost 180,000 new cases in kids between July 9 and August 6 based on data from states.
In total, more than 380,000 children have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic which is about 9% of the population. Here in Texas that number is about 2,500 hundred children.
Both the CDC and Texas Education Agency released safety guidelines for schools to reopen. In Lessons Learned, we look at how local schools plan to keep students as safe and healthy as possible.
Schools plan for and deal with outbreaks of the flu and other viruses every year, some years are worse than others, but the coronavirus took those plans to another level. As you can imagine, it took months to craft the safest way to keep schools clean and students in class.
"Cleaning for germs isn't t he same as cleaning for viruses," David Stein, Area Developer of Office Pride East Texas, said.
At campuses across East Texas electrostatic sprayers are being deployed to deliver a powerful agent against coronavirus in schools.
"It's really all about what we call the dwell time. You have to spray the chemical on the surface for a long time, anywhere from 5-10 minutes, where as you just leave that, where normally you spray a surface and wipe it off," Stein said.
It's one of many tools David Stein, the area developer of Office Pride East Texas, uses to protect businesses and schools, like All Saints against coronavirus.
"So, we have created the Reignite All Saints plan that really has four different scenarios that allows us to really be responsive to what's going on in the community and the area of the threat with the coronavirus," Mike Cobb, All Saints Episcopal School Head of School, said.
Over the past several months, schools took a hard look at how they can mitigate the risk of coronavirus while still being able to keep students on campus.
It starts, not just with cleaning, but screening.
"We are asking all of our parents daily to complete a screen process through an app and it allows them to look for certain things and report back to us," Cobb said.
We are requiring all our employees all 2,700 of them to take their temperatures every morning. I actually take my temperature every morning," Dr. Marty Crawford, TISD Superintendent, said.
Dr. Marty Crawford and TISD have outlined everything in their Return to Learn Plan, which is detailed for parents and students on their website.
It includes protocols for PPE, isolation, cleaning and sanitizing, plus COVID-19 screening which happens before a teacher or student ever steps on campus.
"We've got to have that happen 18+ thousand students, parents and guardians a piece that gets us up to 50,000 people, plus our staff. You are looking at about 60,000 people associated with the operation of TISD. It's got to start at home," Crawford said.
Over at Grace Community School in Tyler, where their student population is closer to a thousand, head of school Jay Ferguson says they'll be pulling out thermometers each morning.
"We will also be doing temperature checks when kids come in, in addition to symptom checks, not just kids, staff as well," Jay Ferguson, Head of School at Grace, said.
Schools will also educate students on COVID symptoms, even the obscure ones like loss of taste and smell. "That's an early symptom for younger children, especially things that have a citrus scent to it, they pick up on that easier and for older students, it's coffee grinds and things like that," Cobb said. "And so having your student close their eyes and be watching for their reactions, if they don't react to the smell or don't smell it then they could have a symptom related to COVID-19."
"We do want to let our parents know that yes we will be doing more," Les Linebarger, Executive Director of Communications & Community Engagement, said.
Because once students walk in those doors, through those hallways and into class, school leaders want as safe of an environment as possible.
"We've got a combination of several things. We have heightened cleaning procedures," Ferguson said. Where we are going to be cleaning restrooms frequently throughout the day, where we're also cleaning the classrooms periodically."
Marty Crawford says they will be cleaning, "multiple times per day making sure our custodians are hitting these classrooms when students aren't in there."
Clearly, efforts to clean, disinfect and sanitize schools will be more intense than ever before, including at Nacogdoches ISD.
"Certainly more intense," Linebarger said. "We are already owned devices and we call them foggers that were used on a regular basis and as you might imagine, a fogger is just what it sounds like, it sprays a mist of disinfectant that finds every potential surface out there and disinfects."
"We are giving our rooms rest periods. We really rarely gave our rooms rest before this. Kids are going all day using the spaces. Now, we are going through the day trying to give those rooms rest periods of about 15 minutes, where we disinfect and really let no one be in that room for awhile," Cobb said.
They also invested in new technology. "So, we're using air purification systems in all of our learning spaces. We've gone with a medical grade air purifier that filters out 99.97% of the harmful things that are in our air. It's obviously still just one part of our program, but we know, even if the investment was high for this, it's worth it for our students," Cobb said.
Mike Cobb, Head of School at All Saints says keeping the areas free of germs will certainly be a team effort. "Teaching our kids they can play a roll with that. We will be giving them wipes. Every one of our teachers will have sprayers in the room, which is a minor version of an electrostatic sprayer, that will allow them between movements to disinfect, as well."
"And there will be responsibility inside the classroom as well as we go throughout our day allowing the students to help with disinfecting wipes and the teachers too," Dr. Marty Crawford said.
Parents should expect more hand-washing, hand sanitizer and lessons on personal hygiene in school than ever before. "We just want to be cautious about it because we want to stay in school. We have somewhere around 70% of our students have elected to come back to school, so we want to make sure we keep that.opportunity with us. It's not just about the students, it's about the teachers too. We want to keep them safe and want to make them feel safe so we can continue to have in school learning until we have a vaccination," Dr. Crawford said.
But, what if someone tests positive for coronavirus?
Linebarger says "TEA, in one of the things they've communicated, direct instruction with us is the processes followed when there is a lab confirmed positive case. We are required to notify every parent of every student on that campus. We are required to notify local health officials, and it triggers what we call the deep cleaning of a campus and it may require a closure. What TEA has encouraged us to do, is to limit the scope of those closures as much as possible."
It's a fine balance keeping schools open and keeping students and teachers safe during a pandemic, but schools believe their safety protocols that took teams of people to create, will give them the best shot at doing that.
If you have an education story for the Morning Loop's Dana Hughey, email her at education@cbs.tv.
