by Lily McInerney
With the closing of two Westchester school districts, including nearby Hastings, Irvington is assuring the community that precautions and preparations are already underway to combat the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) at Irvington schools.
On March 5, Dr. Kristopher Harrison, superintendent of schools, sent a letter home to the students, staff and the community detailing the district’s plans to deal with the outbreak.
“Please be assured that I continue to be in regular communication with the District physician, who is also in on-going contact with the Department of Health,” the letter stated. “Through these communications and all known local information related to COVID-19, we have been guided that there is no reason to close any of the Irvington schools.”
Among the precautions/procedures the school is undertaking according to the letter are:
- Sanitization of all classrooms and common spaces in each school multiple times each week;
- On-going, daily cleaning/sanitization of all high contact items such as door knobs and handles, water fountains, bathroom fixtures, etc.;
- Installation of additional hand sanitizer stations in schools;
- Daily sanitization of all school buses;
- Initiation of planning for distance-learning options should schools need to be closed in the future for COVID-19 or other reasons.
The final item on this list is already underway at the high school as a teacher-administrator committee will be convened on Monday to discuss plans for distance-learning classwork in the event of an extended school closure.
Nearby school districts are following similar protocols. In Chappaqua, for instance, an email went home to parents a week ago assuring the community that due to the school district’s “significant investment in technology, professional development, and blended learning across all of our schools, we are well-positioned to respond should distance learning become a reality.”
In Irvington, many students and staff are also concerned about future field trips, such as the planned trip to France and the middle school’s Washington, D.C. trip.
There are currently 577 confirmed coronavirus cases in France so organizers are unsure if the France trip will go as planned.
On an individual level, Dr. Harrison urged students and staff to stay home if they were sick, practice “respiratory etiquette” (i.e. covering coughs and sneezes, not touching one’s face), and proper “hand hygiene.”
To assist in hygiene, the district has installed several hand sanitizers throughout the building, although these are not the recommended “alcohol-based sanitizers” due to “school requirements,” according to the letter.
These hand sanitizers were installed as a result of the advocacy of sophomore Josh Chang who wrote a detailed letter on Feb. 11 to the administration, prior to the COVID-19 appearing in the area, requesting that hand sanitizers be installed to fight the the flu and cold outbreaks each year (story to come).
“Although it is impossible to put a price on student health, well-being, and academic success, they are clearly the top priorities of any school. IHS should certainly implement hand-sanitizer dispensers along with various promotion measures, which would together likely have an immediate and tangible positive impact on the success of our school as a whole in so many ways.”
Josh Chang, sophomore
The current number of cases in New York as of the morning of March 6 is 23, with the majority of cases (19) in Westchester County, according to reporting from NBC.
According to the World Health Organization, COVID-19 has infected over 100,000 people and killed over 3,300, the majority being in China. According to NBC, New York officials like mayor Bill DiBlasio and governor Andrew Cuomo are reiterating that most cases are mild and the overall risk to the public is still low.
Chinese authorities reported the first case of COVID-19 in Dec. 31, 2019.
