In the wake of parental and community outcry, Charleston County school officials are working this week to make changes to the district’s COVID-19 notification protocol.
District authorities are also partnering with the Medical University of South Carolina to finalize plans to provide coronavirus vaccines to all eligible employees when available, Superintendent Gerrita Postlewait announced on Monday.
Postlewait and other district officials will meet with school principals on Tuesday morning to discuss the feasibility of updating the process currently used to alert parents to COVID-19 cases in their children’s classroom.
Under existing CCSD policy, parents are only contacted if their child is considered to be a “close contact” of a coronavirus positive individual. As defined by the state health agency, this includes anyone who has been within 2 meters of a positive case for 15 minutes or more.
This means that Charleston parents generally do not find positive cases in their children’s classrooms in the district. Instead, families turned to word of mouth and social media to share information about the virus.
“We are working now to try to determine how and under what circumstances we can notify parents when there are positive cases in a classroom, even a positive case,” said Postlewait.
Still, she said, modifying the protocol will not be easy.
“It will be very difficult to do this at the elementary and high school level, as they change classes each term,” said Postlewait.
As a result, the district is focusing its efforts on primary education.
Postlewait’s announcement at Monday’s Whole Committee meeting came after an online petition got more than 700 signatures over the weekend.
North Charleston’s mother, Toni Reale, said she helped create the petition after five students in her son’s class at Malcolm C. Hursey Montessori tested positive for COVID-19. At least one Hursey father whose son shared the classroom with a positive COVID-19 student did not receive notification from the district and then tested positive for the virus.
Reale and other parents sent e-mails to school board members before the meeting, asking them to modify the policy so that every time a student or teacher was positive for the virus, the parents were informed.
“It is very clear that the current definition of close contact is dangerously short of reality,” said Reale.
A district spokesman previously cited student privacy concerns as one of the reasons why schools were not tasked with notifying parents about so-called “classroom contacts”.
According to federal coronavirus guidelines, districts may disclose this information, as long as they do not allow any students to be identified, said Postlewait.
But several other school districts, including those in Berkeley and Greenville counties, chose to inform all students who shared the classroom space with a positive COVID-19 person, in addition to the close contacts established.
“I spoke to districts across the state and when I tell them that we don’t give notifications in class, they look at me like I have two heads,” said Cindy Bohn Coats, a board member.
Coats lobbied the superintendent to define details on when and how the new notification protocol will be implemented.
But Postlewait said additional details were not yet available.
“Until we speak to the directors, it is difficult to know exactly what will work,” she said.
Postlewait added that it “terribly bothered teachers” when the district unexpectedly announced last week that parents could temporarily keep their students at home after the winter holiday as a precautionary measure for COVID-19.
“We will do a professional courtesy to get your opinion and then we will absolutely create a written statement about what we are going to do,” said Postlewait.
Jeff Borowy, the district chief of operations, informed board members that CCSD has partnered with MUSC to set up the logistics for distributing the COVID-19 vaccine to teachers and other school staff as soon as it is available.
Teachers who have direct contact with students are eligible for Phase 1B of the state’s vaccine distribution plan. The district plans to distribute “free and voluntary” vaccines to eligible personnel, said Borowy.
The district is currently considering distributing vaccines in four possible locations: Stall, Burke, Wando and West Ashley high schools.
The district already had a framework for a mass vaccination plan, said Borowy, which helped to speed up the process.
“The CCSD will be ready whenever a vaccine is available,” said Postlewait.
The district has reported 792 cases since the beginning of the school year, according to its COVID-19 panel. Of these, 63 were reported last week and 159 during winter break.
Contact Jenna Schiferl at 843-937-5764. Follow her on Twitter at @jennaschif.