Haines reports 3 COVID cases among elementary school children, but Superintendent says they were identified outside of school, no on-campus community spread at this time

In Haines, seven new positive COVID cases were reported by borough officials on Tuesday, bringing the total active case count to 16. No testing was done over the holiday weekend. Three positive COVID cases were among elementary school children, identified by the Haines School District. KHNS’ Corinne Smith checked in with Superintendent Roy Getchell who says the cases were identified outside the school, and they don’t believe there is community spread on campus at this time. But they’re increasing safety protocols, with the goal to keep schools open.

 

KHNS: Superintendent Getchell, thanks so much for joining us. We have heard there are three positive COVID cases in the school. How were these cases first identified? 

Superintendent Roy Getchell: Well, they were identified because parents are noticing that their children don’t feel well. So they’re not sending them to school, which is what we, which is what we want. And so then they’re getting tested at the clinic, and then the clinic is letting us know. So that is probably one of our most important protocols that we have in place, which is to not come to school when you’re sick. And our parents and public have been really cooperative with that.

KHNS: That is good to hear. So what is known about the source of these COVID cases? And  what is happening now? 

Getchell: “There’s definitely cases that are going around the community, and for a variety of reasons, students have been identified as close contacts. And we’ve not had any that are from within the school building itself. But certainly other cases from around the community have impacted multiple students within our building this week. And, actually, for the last few weeks, we’ve had close contacts identified who were working with public health and working with the clinic and working with us to make sure that that process is gone through before they return to school… So what has to happen for them (students) is they have to have a test after day five, and be symptom free, on day eight, and they can come back. If they develop symptoms, SEARHC does the testing. But if they’re asymptomatic, if they’re identified as a close contact, we’ll do the testing. Once we know about that, we can make arrangements for that to occur.

KHNS: For those students who are home quarantining, are they able to keep up with their schoolwork? How does that work?

Getchell: We work with it like we would an absence. And so absolutely, we do that. And we work with those families to make sure that they have the learning support that they need. So I think that that’s important to recognize we want to make sure that continues no matter the setting, whether they’re at home or whether they’re at school.

KHNS: So has this impacted the health protocols for the district, has this changed anything?

Getchell: Absolutely. And I think it’s important to know, and we’ve said this before that when the 

threat increases, you increase the mitigation. And as it decreases, you decrease that. Fortunately, we were masking as we began the year which allowed us to continue without large numbers of students being quarantined. But we are implementing additional measures over the last couple of days, like working with elementary grades to keep them separated from the other grades at different times of the day, including on the playground, not going to reduce recess, we’re just going to, and the playground itself is a is a low risk, but we’re working really hard to make sure that we that we minimize the risks even further and keep them apart from one another during the day, whether they’re in the building or outside the building, especially until this subsides and then we’ll take a look at that further down the road. We’ve also, we’ve always had strong cleaning mitigations, but we’re, we’re upping that as well. But just working hard to make sure that we’re containing students within their classrooms so that if an outbreak were to occur, that school related, we’re able to contain it.

KHNS: So is there a risk of school closing? Or what would be the threshold that school would actually close?

Getchell: What we’re doing right now is looking at close contacts within the classroom and having students you know, potentially quarantine there, even though we haven’t had any that are school related at this point. But if we started to notice cases within a classroom, we might look at that classroom, or that level, if it was elementary, middle, or high, with a closure being the last possible step…Of course, I’m working with an advisory group in that regard. But what we do know is the importance of students being in school, they’re mitigated while they’re here. And if the country learned anything at all over the last year of virtual education, for most of the country –  we didn’t experience it here, but we can learn from their experience – is that closing school did not decrease the community’s rates of COVID. In fact, sometimes the opposite occurred. So our challenge is to continue to work together, to be safe, to keep in person learning, protect as much as possible and, and respond where we can and accordingly. 

KHNS: Is there anything else you’d like to add on this, of course, we’ll be monitoring this issue, but anything else you’d like to add?

Getchell: Absolutely, and we’re definitely monitoring this closely. And I do work with a great group of people who advise me in regard to this. But you know, just to continue to remind the public to protect the den here, we’re going to bear down and try to work through this as best as we can. But I think everybody knows the steps that they need to take individually and personally to protect the community, but then also to protect in person learning here at school.

KHNS: Thank you so much Superintendent Getchell.

Getchell: Alright, thank you.