The Moniteau County R-1 School District Board of Education met for a special session last week, during which board members took part in a question and answer session with a representative from the Moniteau County Health Center.
Darrell Hendrickson, environmental specialist with the Health Center, was on hand to answer questions early Friday morning as the district grapples with in-person learning while the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect the county. As of Friday's meeting, the district's total number of positive coronavirus cases sat at four, with 23 others out as close contacts.
Those numbers represent a vast improvement on the number of students who were out a few weeks ago, which at one time numbered at nearly 200.
"By Monday, cross my fingers, we don't have any more positives or close contacts between now and then," Superintendent Dwight Sanders said last week. "(If so,) we would have 12 close contacts and one positive, so certainly significantly better than we were a couple of weeks ago when we had 199 students and staff on our list."
As the number of individuals who are forced to be out of the classroom dwindles, the school board focused its questions mostly on clarifying how the Health Center handles probable COVID-19 cases and whether the district's quarantining process can change to result in less time out of the classroom.
Hendrickson said probable cases are those that are linked with a positive case in EpiTrax, a comprehensive disease surveillance system that receives laboratory reports for COVID-19 tests in Missouri and which acts as the authoritative record to trigger case management and investigations by local public health officials. Often, this includes individuals who live in the same household as someone who has tested positive.
Quarantine periods between confirmed positives and probable positives may vary, Hendrickson said. A positive case may only need to quarantine for 10 days after getting their results, since their incubation period could be assumed to have begun when they started showing symptoms, while a probable case would be out of commission for a 14-day window to account for the full COVID-19 incubation period.
Adjusting the district's process with regard to quarantining students may be made easier once rapid testing equipment is deployed at California schools in the near future - they're expected to be deployed around the state by the end of the month. The equipment would be capable of testing for positive cases in 15 minutes, allowing for the district to test students on-site if they are showing any COVID-19 symptoms and only forcing them out of school for the day if they do not test positive and are sick with another illness.
"We're trying to do this as a screening tool," Hendrickson said. "This is one thing I really want us to concentrate on. We're trying to figure out how to cut down on how many people we're putting on quarantine and how many people we're making sit out. We figure out how to keep (positives) out of the school and within the population of the school, and some of these other issues go away."
The group discussed some elements of administering these tests, such as who would be able to do so and whether students will need parental permission to be tested, issues which the group agreed it needs to think through.
Another point board members questioned Hendrickson about was a move some other Missouri counties have begun shifting toward - allowing close contacts to stay in school if they are wearing a face covering at all times. While the effectiveness of masks in helping to prevent the spread of COVID-19 isn't in question, Hendrickson said current guidelines state wearing a mask does not exempt one from being classified as a close contact.
Hendrickson said the onus when it comes to questions like this is on school districts to go "above" him to entities like the Missouri Department of Elementary & Secondary Education to see what it will take to change the guidelines it shared earlier this year regarding safely opening schools this fall.
"When there's a situation of this magnitude, the more pressure that you can bring to bear on the people that have the authority to make the decisions, the better off that you are," Hendrickson said.
The Moniteau County R-1 School District Board of Education will have its next regular monthly meeting at 6 p.m. tonight (Oct. 21).