Contact tracing getting to be a lot for local school division

Davidson says cases are coming in fast and furious.

“We’re starting to get to that point where it’s hard for us to move fast enough to support AHS in their process and of course we know that they’re struggling to move fast enough to keep up with their own.”

The division has been contact tracing with AHS four of the last six days including Friday night and over the weekend. Many times contact tracing goes into the midnight hours.

“Every day if my phone pings I think ‘uh oh’ and I look and if I see that we’re onto a new case then we start the process of contact tracing. And when you first see it, it’s hard to know until you’ve gotten into the school and work with staff to try and figure out broadly that case may impact the school,” Davidson explained.

He says the threshold to continue in-class learning depends on whether they can safely staff a school.

Which includes how many students and staff are in quarantine.

“The sort of eyeball number that Alberta Education provided was around 40-50 percent of an absence of teachers and students, but that number doesn’t always work. If you can’t find subs for 30 percent then you’re in trouble already.”

Right now MHPSD is struggling to have enough substitute teachers.

“On any given day through the course of the last week or so we’ve been short as many as eight subs across the system. And so that coverage is provided by administration or teachers teaching those classes while on their spare or prep period,” Davidson said.

Meantime, if the city of Medicine Hat hits the 250 active COVID-19 case threshold, grades 7-12 would automatically move to online learning.

by Chantal Wagner

Contact tracing getting to be a lot for local school division

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