One week into the new normal

Last Wednesday, 486 kids returned to classes at the MK-8 and, along with them, the possibility of COVID-19. To mitigate the potential spread of this virus, state and local health agencies have mandated certain protocol and the school district has followed these guidelines to the letter, says MK-8 principal Teresa Brown, to keep their doors open for students.

When teachers started training the students about the new rules, “We had meetings with every grade level and told them that we don’t want this to spread, we don’t want to close the school and have distance learning again. How many of you liked that?” Brown smiled as she recalled, “Hardly anybody raised their hands.”

Brown noted the willingness of the youngsters comply with the social distancing and wearing of masks within the school building and at the outside tables. “The kids are so polite and kind.”

The school provides cloth masks that are gathered daily to be washed and disinfected before being redistributed with funds from the state’s COVID-19 grant. Because the communal water fountains had to be shut off, this fund as well as a donation from the local Pinnacle Bank also provides water bottles that have each child’s name taped to them. These bottles are disposable and are used for a week before being thrown away and replaced with new ones.

Students have learned the procedure rather quickly.

“We have a go bag on every door so when the masks get nasty they put them in there and we wash them. We have thousands of cloth masks so we can recycle them,” says Brown, and when the kids are at the tables, “We try to keep them spread out as good as we can and if they’re face to face, the masks have to come up.”

The kids also wash their hands every 1.5 hours throughout the day to lessen the spread of germs on surfaces.

To further ensure the proper handling of the masks when not on their faces, Brown said that the school is beginning to provide students with face mask lanyards, too. “That’s one step further that we can keep everything from touching.”

To open the doors this year, schools had to submit a plan of operation to the state, explained the MK-8 principal, “and we must follow what we put down”.

The details with which the teachers and staff must deal are numerous. Brown spoke about the art class that has always used a communal supply box at each table, but now kids bring their own pencil boxes so they use only their own tools and everything must be cleaned often.

When the guidelines first were handed down to the individual schools, Brown shared a larger obstacle: children were not going to be allowed on the playground equipment at all due to possible viral contamination. Superintendent Mark Broderson queried the state on this requirement with the argument that the virus would die in the heat and subsequent cold before kids could pick it up and the restriction was lifted two days before school started. “That was a nightmare,” says Brown.

To the teachers and staff of MK-8, though, just having the kids back in school is worth the extra effort, says Brown: “They love it here [and] we love them so we’re trying to do the best we can under the guidance we have until somebody lifts it.”