Some students out of school, but no Covid-19 cases

As of Monday, 18 Port Washington-Saukville School District students and three staff members were quarantined from schools, but more than two weeks into the school year the district has not reported a single case of Covid-19 in its facilities. 

The Grafton, Cedarburg and Mequon-Thiensville school districts each have reported at least one case of Covid-19 in their schools, and Port-Saukville administrators said they know the numbers in their buildings can change quickly.

“What the numbers look like in the morning could be very different than how they look by the end of the day,” Director of Special Services Duane Woelfel, who briefed the School Board Monday, said. “That’s why we’re monitoring the numbers so closely.”

The job of trying to keep the coronavirus out of classrooms or stop its spread if it’s detected in schools falls largely to school nurse Abby Kirchen, who has developed a complex spread sheet to track the conditions of students and staff members who have symptoms of illness or have had contact with someone who has Covid-19, Woelfel said. 

“Tracking this is really an amazing feat,” he said. “She (Kirchen) is doing an absolutely tremendous job under tough circumstances.”

Under the district’s exclusion from school protocol, a student or staff member who has tested positive for the virus, has had close contact with someone who has or exhibits one of the symptoms closely associated with Covid-19 — for instance, a fever of 104 degrees or higher, cough or loss of taste and smell — must quarantine outside of school.

Students and staff members can also be excluded from school if they exhibit two or more symptoms that can be associated with Covid-19 but are also indicative of other illnesses or conditions, such as a sore throat, headache, nausea and vomiting or a runny nose and congestion. That’s where it gets tricky, especially with the cold and flu season approaching, Woelfel said.

“This is one heck of a season for allergies, so then you have to ask yourself, ‘If my nose is running, is it running more than it normally would be at this time of year?’” Woelfel said. 

The district has hired a contact tracer to help track the virus, but with no Covid-19 cases in schools, there has been no tracing to do.

Testing is also a key component of the school Covid-19 protocol, and assisting with that is the Washington Ozaukee Public Health Department, which has opened a school testing clinic.

The clinic at the Ozaukee County Administration Center in Port Washington offers tests for students and school staff members  on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. Results are available in 24 to 48 hours, Bailey Murph, senior public health strategist for the department, said. 

The clinic is intended to be a resource for students and staff members who can’t easily obtain tests through their doctors, she said. 

“We want physicians to be testing symptomatic kids,” Murph said, since they will be the ones treating the students. “But if someone is struggling to find a test, we can help them.”

If someone tests positive for the virus, the department first notifies the family and then the school, she said. Contact tracing is then done.

The department is primarily testing people with symptoms, however if someone is asymptomatic but was in the proximity of someone who has tested positive, officials ask that they quarantine and wait five days before being tested so the viral load is detectable, Murph said.

In addition to tracking illness and testing, social distancing is an important part of the School District’s reopening plan.

Its two largest schools, Port Washington High School and Thomas Jefferson Middle School have divided it’s students into two groups, each of which attend in-person classes two days a week and learn online three days a week. 

Students at the district’s three elementary schools, where there is more rooms to separate them, are in classrooms four days a week. 

All schools are closed on Wednesdays for deep cleaning. 

At Monday’s School Board meeting, parent Renee Knepfel asked when school will return to normal.

“When can we get back to full time school?” she asked. “That is the goal, right? What is the criteria?”

According to what the district calls its re-entry plan, a return to full-time, in-person instruction depends on the Covid-19 infection risk in the communities within the School District and conditions in the schools.

Port Washington and Saukville are hovering at the high-risk level, according to Washington Ozaukee Public Health Department data, and until that drops the district’s plan calls for part-time classroom instruction blended with online learning to continue. 

Countywide, the number of Covid-19 cases are increasing, which Murph said is due in part to the fact “we’re not seeing a lot of compliance with isolating, quarantining and mask wearing.”

And, she said, when contact tracing, the department isn’t “always certain we’re getting that transparency and honesty from people that we need.”

Students, however, have surprised teachers with their adherence to mask-wearing rules.

“We were very, very pleasantly surprised by how good our kids are at wearing masks. They could give lessons,” middle school teacher Laura Rashid told the School Board. “They have a little work to do with social distancing, but so do adults.

“This is a pretty scary time. We just want to get this right. Our students are relying on us and all the adults in their lives to get this right.”

Ozaukee Press reporter Kristyn Halbig Ziehm contributed to this story.