LANESVILLE, Ind. — As more districts reopen in southern Indiana, school leaders are tasked with tracking COVID-19 cases through contact tracing. Nurses and staff in charge of contact tracings can spend hours more each week dealing with them.
"It's just trying to make sure we know where everybody's at, when they can come back and that everybody that isn't supposed to be here doesn't show up," said Cassie Gustin, school nurse at Lanesville Community Schools.
Contact tracing is now added to her responsibilities as a nurse for hundreds of students. According to Gustin, each classroom in the district has a seating chart. If she confirms a positive coronavirus case in a student she first calls the health department, then references that seating chart.
"Whoever is [within] six foot for 15 minutes with exposure to that person that was positive then we would contact them and they would have to leave school," she said.
She's already done contact tracing multiple times this school year. The district has confirmed six positive coronavirus cases so far and put dozens of students in quarantine.
"If they have symptoms, any symptom listed in the health department on the COVID list, we go ahead and send them home and then we trace them for an isolation period too," said Gustin.
But Gustin isn't the only one facing the challenges of this tracing and forced quarantine. Teachers are feeling the brunt of it as well.
"It just puts a whole new level of classroom teaching because now you're dealing with the physical kids sitting in front of you, you're dealing with the virtual kids that have to log on at the same time from home and teaching to both groups and doing that to the best of your ability," said Lanesville Community School Superintendent Steve Morris. "It's going to be a stressful challenging year and I hope everybody understands that."
Through all the challenges and stressors, Morris said it's worth it to have students back in the classroom.
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