ASMSA reports no COVID-19 cases during semester
The Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts reported no COVID-19 cases this semester, according to Donnie Sewell, the school’s public information specialist.
“I think the end result is a testament to the shared commitment of our students, faculty, staff and families. In many ways, we accomplished something that few, if any of us thought was possible back in the summer. But it’s also a pretty clear reminder to communities at large that if members will collectively commit to basic practices like social distancing, wearing a mask and limiting unnecessary contact, that communities can continue on and thrive,” said Corey Alderdice, ASMSA director.
Because of the residential nature of ASMSA, school officials restricted the number of times students could go off campus and limited the number of times students could visit home, and the amount of time and opportunity parents had to visit their students on campus.
“Keeping outside exposure as nominal as possible is probably the biggest differentiator because when you have hundreds of students coming and going from campus to home each day, along with their siblings, parents and other family members, that expands your potential contact points on it,” Alderdice said.
One thing that was incredibly important for ASMSA was in August when, in order to start with a clean slate, all stu
dents were required to have a polymerase chain reaction test, which is different from the rapid antigen test.
“PCR test is a diagnostic test used to detect an active COVID infection. The PCR has much higher accuracy than the rapid antigen test. It is sent off to a lab and usually takes a few days to result. The antigen test results in less than an hour, but has a high false negative,” said Monica Jaskovic, ASMSA school nurse.
“We chose to use the PCR test instead of the antigen due to the high false- negative results. I feel by requiring the PCR, it has helped us be more confident knowing the results are more accurate. I believe the students and their families felt more at ease knowing this, as well,” she said.
When students exhibited any symptoms, the school officials immediately defaulted to getting them tested, immediately begin contact tracing and isolated them.
“There were some challenges surrounding that decision because COVID-19 symptoms are also the symptoms of many allergies, the cold, the flu and other ailments. As a result, we had to treat anyone with symptoms as a possible positive case until diagnostic tests told us differently,” said Rheo Morris, ASMSA dean of students.
“We’re small enough as a campus community that we can be responsive quickly, that it’s an intimate enough community that we really know who is interacting with each other, and so that means we can respond much more quickly rather than having to spend a lot of time on the front end, gathering that potential contact tracing data,” he said.
In the beginning, they let the parents decide if they wanted to get their student immediately and take them to get tested. Different cities and counties took longer to return results, causing quarantined students to remain in quarantine for many days.
“We quickly switched to getting permission from parents for us to take them to get tested locally with a facility that provided us with 24-48 hour test results,” Morris said.
ASMSA has walked a tight line with its students’ mental health because of all of the restrictions on checking out and going home that the school has put in place.
“The residence life staff drastically increased programming to keep the students engaged. We ensured there was something for them to do every day and on the weekend and increased lunch groups with our counselor and one of the residence life staff members who is a social worker,” Morris said.
“ASMSA is a relatively small size. The residential nature of the program, as well as the students’ clear desire to preserve that residential experience for as long as possible this semester, are probably the biggest differentiators between our school and the other local districts,” Alderdice said.
ASMSA not having any cases shows how serious all members of the community of learning are in being able to preserve the residential experience, and the kind of opportunities that affords, that they’re willing to make sacrifices, he said.
“They value those kinds of experiences that come from being shared in a shared community, which you aren’t really able to replicate fully through online or remote learning,” Alderdice said.
Morris said the school created very detailed protocols in the fall semester when they reopened which were put in place with the underlying goal of “shared responsibility.”
“As a residential school, we were aware that everyone had to play a part in keeping the community safe,” she said.
With the cases in Arkansas and Garland County still rising, ASMSA will keep the same measures in place for the upcoming semester, including having negative PCR test results to checkin following an isolation period; mask-wearing at all times except within their personal rooms; a reduced checkout window; only parents/ legal guardians can visit and can only stay in the lobby; temperature check at the door before visitors enter; students can no longer go home on weekends except during extended weekend; and there will be immediate quarantine and contact tracing once a student presents with symptoms.