Health director addresses concerns over school reopening
Robbinsville – Graham County Health Director Beth Booth spoke to the county’s Board of Education at a special called meeting Tuesday, attempting to quell concerns, doubts and fears over the start of the 2020-21 school year.
Booth pointed out that the health department has been consulting with the board for weeks about Graham County Schools beginning the school year Monday. She assured the board that the school system has taken all necessary precautions.
“You’re as prepared as you’re going to be,” Booth said. “Are you going to see a spike in cases? Probably. But I don’t think there’s anything you can do about that anyway.
“As far as the precautions the school system has taken, I think you’ve done excellent. The water bottle refill stations, the social distancing stickers. I think your children will be more apt to social distance in the classroom, more so than outside of the classroom. You cannot control human behavior.”
Prior to Booth addressing the board, Dirk Cody spoke during public comment and asked that the start of the school year be delayed six weeks, citing the uptick in numbers. Booth told the board that doing so would only be putting off the inevitable.
“You could delay the start of school, but you would just delay your spike,” Booth said. “It’ll eventually happen, just like it did last flu season, when the health department was asked to close school because you had a spike in flu cases.”
Recent spike
As of Tuesday, Graham County had recorded 27 positive cases of the coronavirus in the last three weeks, after only reporting 10 by the end of June. Test results are taking anywhere between 3-16 days to be returned, but if someone undergoes a test their isolation period is up after 14 days.
Booth told the board that if a child tests positive, Superintendent Angie Knight would be informed. If the parent of a school-age child tests positive, they will be encouraged to self-isolate.
If they do not, Knight will be notified.
“I’m a forest – not trees – person. In the grand scheme of things, COVID is not behaving any differently than our flu season normally does,” Booth said. “What you’re looking at right now, with the steep rise in cases … it was expected. The health department is expecting us to hit 50 in the next couple of weeks. That was our original projection.
“We’re keeping an eye on the numbers. They are concerning, obviously, as any respiratory virus would be concerning. But it’s not came to the point where we are very, very concerned.”
The cases in the county is what Booth deemed “widespread,” as is the age range of patients. Though she did not disclose exact statistics, she did state that at least one of the county’s five hospitalizations was a patient under age 65.
“People are becoming very tired of dealing with it (the virus),” Booth said. “When they become tired of dealing with it, that’s when they become a little more lax with precautions. It’s summertime and everyone did their traveling, which is fine, but that’s the accepted risk they took.
“COVID is going to last a couple of years. It’s not going anywhere and it actually won’t anywhere, ever. H1N1 – which was in 2009 – is in your flu shot. It does not ‘go’ anywhere; you just build up a tolerance as you become reinfected.”
Personnel hirings
Following closed session, the board approved the following personnel recommendations, for hire:
* Mandy Adams, seventh-grade science teacher;
* Jordan Welch, teacher’s assistant, Robbinsville Elementary School.