With coronavirus now present in Colorado, leaders of the 22,000-student Mesa County Valley District 51 aren’t letting their recent experience with a contagious stomach bug go to waste.
“The good news-bad news is we had a dry run in November,” said Superintendent Diana Sirko.
Thatap when she, with health officials, decided to close all 46 schools for two days after an outbreak of norovirus, an illness that causes vomiting and diarrhea. Prior to the districtwide closure before Thanksgiving break, several schools closed individually for one or two days.
Sirko and her team have many of the same protocols from last fall in place now, including regular communication with the county health department and routine monitoring of absence rates due to illness. But the norovirus outbreak also delivered lessons about how communication, data collection, and custodial systems could be improved.
Tanya Marvin, the districtap director of nursing services, said the system for updating top district and school officials about outbreak plans has been revamped to ensure information gets to the right people even if someone at the top of the chain of command is out. She also worked with the districtap IT department to create a new set of districtwide reports showing illness and absence trends.
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