To improve communications between your child’s school and home and in response to the School-Home Communication Survey that was recently made available to our parents, I want the topic of the district’s first TIGER TALK blog post to address a couple of questions/concerns communicated by parents in the actual survey. The questions dealt with 1.) how students and school employees are chosen to be quarantined, and 2.) why the district doesn’t give regular updates (numbers) on school/district COVID-19 totals.

Before I get started with my responses to the questions above, I want to thank our parents who have taken the time to respond to our recent survey. We believe communications between school and home are vital and when parents are involved and informed about the educational process and the options available to their children, students will reach their highest potential. This particular survey, which is still open and available to take part in, has already provided the district with valuable information, both positive and negative, that will help the district improve our lines of communication, which will be beneficial to all stakeholders. The survey can be accessed at https://forms.gle/9c4RFz7CxRNAkTjF6.

In response to question 1, let me say that the district has no leeway in how to choose who gets quarantined or not. The Arkansas Department of Health (ADH) makes the choice quite clear. When the district is informed that a student or teacher has tested positive for COVID-19, the district’s Point of Contact (POC) for COVID-19, Nurse Donya Gueydan, is notified immediately and will begin an investigation. The POC is then charged with the task of communicating with the infected individual to gather information about who the individual remembers coming into close contact with since testing positive including the 48 hours before testing positive. By ADH guidelines, a close contact is an individual confirmed to be within six (6) feet of another person (s) for 15 cumulative minutes or longer within a 24-hour period who has tested positive for COVID-19 during the infectious period. After speaking with the infected individual, the POC will continue the investigation, which oftentimes involves looking at seating charts in classrooms, breakfast and lunch seating locations, bus seating charts, who the student has ridden or walked to school with, who the individual has come into close contact with on a sports team or in a music ensemble, and the list goes on. Teachers, coaches, directors, and bus drivers since day one (1) of school have been asked to keep detailed seating charts. Teachers have also been asked to socially distance their rooms as much as possible, but unfortunately, a lot of classrooms are not large enough to socially distance students at least six (6) feet apart. In those cases, we will take a tape measure into the affected room and measure distances between the infected individual’s seat and the other individuals in the room. We also know that often, we are unable to socially distance on our buses, so we may have to use a tape measure there as well.

Once the POC has finished her investigation, all confirmed close contacts are notified immediately to begin a 14-day quarantine. The day count begins with the last day the identified close contacts came into contact with the infected individual. The notifications are made by the POC or her designee(s) and the parent will be the first one notified. If the student is in high school and the parent is not available, the POC or designee will inform the student of the quarantine and leave contact information for the parent.

Finally, after all affected students and school employees are notified of their quarantine, the POC will send the ADH a list of all those being quarantined including their contact information and the contact information of the infected individual. The ADH is then supposed to reach out to the infected individual and his/her parents to begin their own contact tracing investigation of possible close contacts that the infected individual has come into contact with outside the school system and begin making those contacts.

In concluding my response to question #1, if any of the individuals that are assigned to be quarantined start getting COVID symptoms and/or decide to go get tested for COVID-19 and are found to be positive, the newly infected individuals are asked to contact the district’s POC and a new investigation will be started to identify close contacts to this individual and the process will repeat itself. As you can see, this is a major task for each school district and their assigned POC, and it’s one that is not taken lightly.

For question #2 my answer will be much briefer. Because of the size of our school district, we should have fewer students that test positive for COVID. In fact, at the time of this post, our district has had less than ten (10) students and/or employees in total test positive for COVID-19 since the Governor closed down school districts back in March. In contrast, the Fayetteville School District, just eight (8) miles north of us has created a COVID-19 Dashboard on their webpage that shows they currently have 36 Active COVID-19 positive cases and 37 recovered COVID cases between their students and staff. The fact that our district is so much smaller and would likely have no more than a few positive active cases at any given time, we are following the guidance given to us by the ADH and legal counsel from the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) to not share any such information to protect the privacy of our students and staff. The following is a direct quote from ADE Legal, “FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) does not specify an exact number for prohibiting disclosure; however, LOTS of guidance provided by the USDOE Privacy and Technical Assistance Center (PTAC) over the years has led ADE to recommend for schools that less than 5 not be disclosed to mitigate the probability of personally identifiable information being disclosed.”

As far as the district providing any reporting on COVID-19 cases and close contacts, the district will follow the guidance from both the ADE and the ADH to only notify the parents of our students and/or employees that have come into close contact with a confirmed positive case. If a larger group of students (i.e. athletic team, music ensemble) comes into close contact with an infected teammate or fellow member, the district may release a statement to the parents of the students in the large group affected sharing what information it can to help calm parents’ concerns.

In concluding my response to question #2, we hope that our parents and community will understand the complexity of the COVID-19 matters the district is being asked to deal with. The West Fork School District remains committed to providing the safest learning environment possible for our students and staff and will continue to follow the guidance provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Arkansas Department of Education in conjunction with the Arkansas Department of Health.

In closing, I hope you have found the district’s first blog post to be informative. If you ever have any questions or concerns concerning your child’s education, please feel free to reach out to his/her school office or the district’s administration office.