As schools consider how to handle potential COVID-19 cases, their staff members may be called upon to help with contact tracing. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr. Jennifer McCormick said last week that parents have been hesitant to verify their children’s identities and personal information with state contact tracers and have been calling schools instead.
“Parents seem to trust schools when schools call because they identify the person,” McCormick said during a media briefing Thursday. “If I am the principal and they know me, I’m the counselor and they know me, and I’m making that call, that goes a lot different than if I’m a stranger asking for personal identification or you’re wanting me to verify information about my child when I really have no idea who’s on the other end of that call, even though they’re identifying themselves.”
But McCormick cautioned that contact tracing has proven to be difficult, both due to the lag time in testing and the nature of contact tracing itself. “It is a lot,” she said. “So if we have one positive, I’ve heard schools call and say, ‘You know, with that one positive, we had 48 kids to track down.’ That’s a lot. So you’re talking about capacity, and I know the Department of Health has hired contact tracers but you’re still at a capacity issue.”
Some schools have been trying to ease the process by dividing students into separate “pods.” “Those pods – they’re kids – can quickly morph, and so schools are really trying to figure out how do you tighten those down logistically with, like, physical barriers like ropes or different things, to help with that situation,” McCormick said.
But in many cases, McCormick said school officials may not know that a student has tested positive for COVID-19 unless a parent tells them. “So if my child’s positive and I don’t tell the school, I can send my child to school, and there’s not a whole lot the school’s going to do about that if we don’t know. But if there is a reported case, then it goes from the school to the health department or the health department to the school, so we can then start the whole contact tracing.”
During state officials’ COVID-19 press conference Wednesday, State Health Commissioner Dr. Kris Box said the state’s contact tracers are asking positive cases whether they attend a school, but she also encouraged parents to contact schools directly if a child tests positive.
