Tour offered
Superintendent Joel Boyd offered The Sun an opportunity for the tour after a rocky couple of weeks. Last month, at the last minute the School Department made a call at the last minute to delay in-person learning. Boyd said the delay was because there were not a sufficient amount of air purifiers. Others, however, like City Councilors Dan Rourke and William Samaras, said the schools simply were not prepared well.
The delay prompted Rourke to file a motion to determine if it makes sense to have the city take over certain school department operations. Samaras voted in favor, as did a majority of the council.
Boyd reacted to the City Council action by stressing collaboration between the school- and city-side of local government. Days after announcing the delay, air purifiers arrived and so did a limited amount of in-person learning.
On a recent tour of Sullivan Middle School and Reilly Elementary School, The Sun saw the air purifiers and cleaning protocols in action.
Blue paw prints dotted school hallways marking where students can stand while socially distancing.
Small tables with hand sanitizer and napkins dotted the hallways.
In the Sullivan School, slips of paper taped to classroom doors indicated which classrooms were being used and what that classroom’s student capacity was.
In the classrooms, blue tape on the floor marked the socially-distanced location for each desk and unused desks created corridors for students to navigate through the classroom. Other classrooms not being used, served as storage for excess furniture.
According to Underwood, each day every area in the schools is washed, wiped down and fogged at least once. Most schools are receiving multiple foggings.
In preparation for school reopening the district bought thousands of gallons of disinfectant, according to Underwood. Each school has at least 120 gallons.
The disinfectant being used to fog the schools has a 1-minute kill time and is designed for fighting COVID-19.
“We’ll go into a classroom and we’ll get everything,” Underwood said as he demonstrated how the fogging worked at the Reilly School.
Throughout the day custodians are also expected to wipe down railings and other high touch, high risk areas.
The new cleaning protocols do take more time, Underwood said, but the custodians are able to keep up with it because fewer classrooms are in use. Should schools return to full capacity, adjustments would have to be made for the school maintenance teams.
“I can attest that the buildings are absolutely clean, they are ready for school, I invite anyone to come to any of our schools, not just this one, to any of our schools to look at the conditions of it,” Underwood said.