Four people among Goleta Union School District’s roughly 4,000 students and staff have tested positive for the novel coronavirus since students returned back to the classroom two weeks ago.
Two of the positive cases were among students and two were among staff, Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources David Simmons told the Goleta Union Board of Trustees on Wednesday night.
“We really are, I think, doing an excellent job with regard to the multiple layers of safety that we are maintaining,” Simmons said.
As far as on-site transmission, the district has had one verified case of on-site transmission in the entirety of the pandemic — and that occurred last December, Simmons added.
The Board of Trustees received an update from the superintendent’s cabinet on Wednesday night, outlining staff vaccination rates, testing, and COVID-19 safety measures.
The district has an 88% vaccination rate among all of its 617 employees, which is an increase from the last board meeting when the employee vaccination rate was 83%, according to Simmons.
About 95% of certificated employees, including teachers, were fully vaccinated as of Wednesday morning, about 80% of the classified employees were fully vaccinated, and all of the management staff members were fully vaccinated, Simmons said.
The district has partnered with a local company to test unvaccinated employees weekly, and has already begun the testing process before the state deadline of Oct. 15, Simmons said.
With regard to student testing, the district has signed up for a grant from the state Coronavirus Testing Task Force that would provide end-to-end testing services so that the district would not have to hire any additional personnel to carry out surveillance testing for students, according to Simmons.
However, Simmons said the district has not had any response from the Coronavirus Testing Task Force other than the acknowledgment that it has received the application.
Darcy Delgado, a member of the task force, went over the district’s data and recommended doing testing on 15%, or approximately one-sixth, of students on each school site every week, Simmons said, adding that the testing would be sequential and not random.
While the district has not heard anything else from the task force, a box full of 2,000 PCR COVID-19 tests arrived at the district office on Wednesday afternoon that will enable the district to carry out approximately four weeks of testing, according to Simmons.
With tests in hand, the district has still not received any information on how to enter the data on which students and staff will be tested, what kind of HIPAA waivers will be needed, or how to access the online portal with test results, Simmons said.
“We are waiting for them to get back to us and tell us exactly how to move forward,” Simmons said. “It’s very much a moving target right now, but we do have test kits, we don’t know what to do with them, but we do have (them).”
Cherilyn Lew, Assistant Superintendent of Pupil Services, went over the district’s contact tracing methods for when someone in the district does test positive for the novel coronavirus.
When office staff or other staff members are notified that someone has symptoms or received a positive test result, the school nurses carry out the contact tracing with the appropriate personnel, contacting students, families, and staff, Lew said.
If there is a positive case, the school nurses and principal will work with the cabinet members to employ the communication systems, she added. For the staff member or student that is positive, the school nurse will have direct communication with the positive individual and provide “very specific information,” Lew said.
“There are so many variables that we really end up having to have a full discussion,” Lew said. “We have to adapt every single letter because it’s who had a close contact, who is vaccinated, who is not vaccinated, are they in quarantine, are they in isolation, are they on modified quarantine? All of these decisions we make collectively as a team.”
The communication with affected individuals provides information on whether they are in quarantine, modified quarantine, and when they can return back to school, Lew said. If a student is in quarantine, they will be placed on a short-term independent study program so that they can continue learning, she added.
To the greatest extent possible, Lew said that the district will contact everyone by phone to inform them if they had a close contact, send a letter, and send a Parent Square message.
“We really try to emphasize personal communication; we know that the process can be scary and that there are unknowns,” Lew said. “But I will say that we are very supportive in the way that we are trying to support our families and our staff in the communication and accessing care and then, of course, implementing our safety plan.”
The district has been able to maintain “very lovely” small class sizes, said Assistant Superintendent of Instructional Services Mary Kahn. Two schools have an average class size of 15, three schools have an average class size of 16, and four have an average class size of 17, Kahn said.
“Our average class size is smaller even than we predicted, even with some of our students returning,” Kahn said. “It’s nice because it’s across the board. So we have a couple (class sizes) that are at 23, but most of them are at that nice small class size, which means that we have a couple that are pretty small.”
The small class sizes allow the teachers to provide strong instruction and that intervention with the students that they know well, Kahn said.
The Independent Study Program is off and running, with 47 students participating across grades TK through sixth, according to Kahn. The program had slightly more enrollment than the district anticipated, so one teacher who had been supporting just intervention had to take on the TK and kindergarten independent study students, Kahn said.
There is one teacher doing first through third grade and one doing fourth through sixth, each with 20 students, according to Kahn.
The district purchased 320 air purifiers over the last year, with the last set of 25 arriving last week, to keep fresh air circulating throughout the classrooms, said Conrad Tedeschi, Assistant Superintendent of Fiscal Services. The air purifiers are medical-grade and last about five years, so the units are “very sturdy and very thorough,” he said.
The district has just under 200 classrooms, so a lot of other office spaces and libraries are able to utilize the air purifiers as well, Tedeschi added.
The district carried out air ventilation testing at Isla Vista Elementary School and found that the combination of open doors and windows, and the purifiers, had air turned over in the space more than the recommended amount, according to Tedeschi.
Additionally, the district just received another 50 pop-up tents to allow for outside learning, Tedeschi said.
The coronavirus pandemic has changed and shifted in the past 18 months, and the district said it is ready to keep rolling with the punches.
“We know from this pandemic that it really has required us to be fluid and flexible, and as we know better, we do better,” said Superintendent Diana Roybal. “We are a family and we really need to think that way in our school district, that we’re here for all kids — not just some kids, for all kids — and we really want to approach this as if we’re making decisions about our own children.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Jade Martinez-Pogue can be reached at jmartinez-pogue@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
