Port-Saukville schools beat back Covid-19 for time being

A Port Washington-Saukville School District that implemented temporary mask mandates at some schools and opened a rapid-response testing clinic at the high school as Covid-19 raced through its buildings earlier this year has beaten back the virus, at least for now, an administrator said Monday.

The district began this week with 11 student cases of Covid-19, down from a high of 73 just weeks ago, Director of Special Services Duane Woelfel told members of the School Board’s Executive Committee.

Of the four teachers currently quarantined, two have tested positive for the virus.

“We’re definitely trending in the right direction,” he said. 

As of the end of last week, 243 people had received free tests at the clinic run by Summit Clinical Laboratories through a Wisconsin Department of Health Services program at Port Washington High School. The clinic is open from  8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays for all district students and staff members as well as the people they live with. 

One of the challenges of keeping Covid-19 under control  while not sending students and staff members home needlessly is determining quickly who has the coronavirus and who is suffering from an aliment that share its symptoms, such as the common cold. 

The clinic has done that by providing results in as little as a few minutes in some cases to a couple of hours, officials said, and that can be the difference between students missing a class period or two and being out of school for weeks. 

On Oct. 11, the day the clinic opened, a student came to the office with symptoms, Woelfel told the School Board earlier this month. 

“He got a test and a few hours later was back in class after it came back negative,” he said.

On Monday, Woelfel told the committee, “The feedback has been that it’s very easy, it’s very quick and it’s extremely convenient.”

School Board member Sara McCutcheon, who said she took her nephew to the clinic, agreed. 

“It literally took two minutes and he was back in school,” she said. “It couldn’t be any easier or more convenient.

“Thank you to everyone who was instrumental in making this happen.”

While the feedback is positive now, the district’s announcement of the clinic was greeted by social media conspiracy theories  about random, mandatory testing of students.

Woelfel responded earlier this month by saying, “I just want to be very clear — this is a voluntary service. It’s a service intended to get kids back in class, because if the test is negative, students can get back to class or back to an activity quickly.”

Before students can be tested, their parents must file a consent form with the district, which can be revoked, then sign a registration form on the day of the test. 

The state of Covid-19 in schools this week marks a significant turnaround from last month when school nurse Abigail Monroe told Executive Committee members, “The new positive cases are coming in so rapidly and in greater numbers than we’ve ever seen before.

“If there’s a positive student in school on Friday, by Monday there are three more positive cases in that classroom.”

At one point at Lincoln Elementary School, all but two students in one fourth-grade class were quarantined at home. Eventually, the teacher left school to teach from home and the two remaining students joined other fourth-grade classes temporarily, school officials said. 

District policy recommends but does not require students to wear masks until the infection rate in a particular school hits 3%, when face coverings are required for 20 days and until the infection rate falls below that threshold. Three schools — Lincoln and Dunwiddie elementary schools and Thomas Jefferson Middle School — hit that mark last month, although infection rates have since dropped and masks are not currently required at any schools.

Although the district is now seeing progress in the fight against Covid-19, administrators warn that conditions in school are not back to normal. 

“We are very much still in the thick of Covid,” Director of Business Services Mel Nettesheim said Monday. “I think we forget — me included — that this is a very stressful year. This is a very mentally exhausting year.”