Two students attending Pennekamp Elementary’s child care center and a teacher at Pacific Elementary last week tested positive for COVID-19. Those tests, along with the positive test of a Mira Costa High School football player, bring Manhattan Beach Unified School District’s total to four cases since allowing some students back on campus.
Superintendent Mike Matthews said the infections at Pennekamp appear to have been successfully contained.
“Any student in class with either of the students is quarantined at this time,” Matthews said. “There have been no other positive cases identified at Pennekamp.”
Pacific Elementary Principal Rhonda Steinberg sent out a letter last Thursday notifying staff that an employee had tested positive the previous day.
“The employee was on campus Monday, October 19; Tuesday, October 20; and for a couple of hours on Wednesday, October 21,” Steinberg wrote. “The employee is in isolation and is following medical orders. Quarantining is not required for anyone else in the Pacific community at this time because there were no known ‘close contacts.’”
Close contacts are defined as anyone who comes within six feet of an infected person for 15 minutes or more, according to state and county guidelines. Steinberg also noted that the teacher’s classroom had been cleaned and disinfected according to Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Guidelines.
“All areas of the Pacific campus are safe to enter,” Steinberg said.
Matthews said the many protocols the district is using — including the use of 12 student cohorts that do not intermingle, strict adherence to social distancing guidelines, and infrastructure such as spacing guidelines, plexiglass, and handwashing stations — have been successful in preventing infection spread when positive cases do occur. But Matthews said that perhaps the most crucial aspect has been how forthright staff, students, and parents have been. The superintendent noted last week, when announcing the positive test of the Mira Costa athlete, “there should be no stigma” involved for those who do become infected.
“Our teachers, staff, parents, and students are doing a great job of informing us when there is a concern, and cooperating with the instructions we provide,” Matthews said.
A key part of a broader reopening of schools will be the ability to contain spread when positive tests occur. County guidelines require school closure when three positives occur on any campus. The superintendent, in his weekly “Monday Message” email to the MBUSD community, noted that three of the district’s four positive tests utilized the quarantining of cohorts because there had been contact with other students or staff.
“We followed up with all of the quarantined individuals, and, to date, there are no cases where the positive case resulted in a transmission to others,” Matthews wrote.
Matthews said that the district hopes to unveil a website this week with a COVID dashboard that keeps tracks of cases by school site.
Shawn Chen, president of the Manhattan Beach Teachers Association, said that many of the protocols teachers helped develop with district leadership are proving effective. In addition to teachers back on campus for the hybrid high needs program — which allows some special education students to spend part of their day in classrooms for in-person instruction, in addition to distance learning — some who are still teaching strictly distance learning do so from classrooms.
“Our union agreement allows them to do so with strict safety measures in place,” Chen said. “The union leadership wants our members to be able to exercise their individual preference.”
The teachers union has been blamed by many parents who are agitating for broader in-person classroom instruction, but district leadership has repeatedly stressed the importance of teachers’ cooperation. Most recently, the teachers’ association signed off on an applications Matthews submitted for the County’s TK-2 waiver program, which would allow the district’s five elementary campuses to resume hybrid in-person teaching for early grade levels.
Chen said the testing of procedures and protocols occurring with small numbers of students on campus at present will be useful to more broadly open classrooms safely.
“Starting with EDP and limited on campus presence is a wise way to test the capacity to clean and also to react to cases when, not if, they arise,” Chen said.
LA County does not appear to be close to qualifying for a broader reopening of schools. The County remains in Tier One, or the so-called “Purple Tier” in the state’s framework, which signifies “widespread risk” for COVID-19 infection. Moving into a higher tier in which a full school reopening could occur requires the county average fewer than 7 new daily COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people for two consecutive weeks. LA County recently jumped from 7.4 to 8 cases per day. Even Manhattan Beach, which had leveled out, registered 40 new cases during the last two weeks of October.
Some parents have asked for MBUSD to flout LA County Department of Public Health guidelines and reopen.
“Our infections followed the pattern in Europe initially,” said Chen. “With Europe going back into lockdown but leaving schools open, many of those advocating for overturning LACDPH guidelines would be unlikely to vote for the kind of socialist policies making the school re-openings in Europe possible.” ER
