Westhill staff question city’s contact tracing practices
“Please keep in mind if a teacher is asked questions and then we discover that they were a close contact to the student, that teacher should have remained home that day and never have come to school in the first place. That is why contact tracing needs to be completed.”
Westhill Principal Michael Rinaldi
STAMFORD — The principal and teachers at Westhill High School have called into question the city’s contact tracing protocols, saying they broke down recently after two students at the school tested positive on a Sunday.
City and school district officials said this week that they followed protocols, though a discussion on the matter was marked by conflicting messages about when a school should be temporarily closed.
Westhill Principal Michael Rinaldi spoke during a special meeting of the Stamford Board of Education this week and said the district’s own guidance on contact tracing was not followed, following the report of two positive cases within the Westhill community on Sunday, Nov. 8.
Teachers who had contact with one of those cases weren’t notified in time and showed up to work the next morning, only to be stopped at the front door, Rinaldi said.
He referred to a document titled “Timeline Steps for a Positive Case,” which was given to administrators to follow whenever someone in a school is infected with COVID-19.
In a segment about reaching
out to all people identified as “close contacts” to a positive case, that document reads, “If not all are contacted ... the school should go to distance learning for the following day.”
Whether or not everyone was contacted in the Nov. 8 case was a point of contention between Rinaldi and district administrators and city officials.
Moira Bryson, nurse supervisor, said contact tracing is a collaboration between the city’s Health Department and school administrators.
“From my end, it was completed,” she said, about the cases at Westhill. “I did speak to the family. I did speak to the students. I did pass along who needed to be quarantined.”
Doctor Jennifer Calder, head of the city’s Health Department, said Bryson did everything that was asked of her and completed the contact tracing on Sunday, Nov. 8.
The most important part, she said, was identifying the person with the virus.
“We want to remove that person and make sure that person is no longer able to transmit disease,” she said. “Once we have done that, we have done the most important part because we have stopped transmission.”
Rinaldi said he learned of the two separate positive cases late in the afternoon on Sunday, Nov. 8, and was told by an associate superintendent that the Health Department was in control of the contact tracing.
But later that night, he said he was told that contact tracing would continue the next day.
“The fact of the matter is, despite what was said earlier this evening, contact tracing was not completed Sunday night,” he said. “Teachers needed to be spoken to Monday morning. We had to be at the school super early to try to intercept them at the door.”
He added, “Please keep in mind if a teacher is asked questions and then we discover that they were a close contact to the student, that teacher should have remained home that day and never have come to school in the first place. That is why contact tracing needs to be completed.”
This week’s meeting was not the first time a faculty member at Westhill has questioned contract tracing practices.
Last week, an English teacher at Westhill reported to administrators that a student was in her classroom who was marked as “quarantined” in PowerSchool, the district’s management software system.
Superintendent Tamu Lucero responded at the meeting by saying she reached out this week to a contact at the state Department of Public Health to get guidance on such cases.
This week, Lucero shared an email from Thomas St. Louis, the program director of occupational health and special projects for the Connecticut Department of Public Health, in which he states that a delay in contact tracing should not mean automatic closure of a school.
“Given the procedures in place to mitigate any spread of infection in schools, if a student inadvertently attends during a time before you have a chance to direct them to quarantine, I wouldn’t expect there to be any significant risk to others,” he wrote. “The bar for closing schools should be set very, very high and it is unlikely that a brief delay in identifying all the contacts would rise to the level of needing to close the school entirely.”
During the meeting, Rinaldi pushed back on Lucero’s response, saying such guidance contradicts the district’s document on steps to follow after a positive case.
“We were following the guidelines for positive cases,” Rinaldi said. “At that point, we didn’t do what we had as our guidelines.”
Lucero responded by saying the “timeline” document is not part of the city’s official guidelines.
Rinaldi then asked if the city’s stance is therefore changed based on the guidance from the state.
At that point, Board President Andy George intervened and said the back-and-forth was not “appropriate for a board meeting.”
Earlier in the meeting, Mayor David Martin backed up Lucero.
“As reported back from the state, if some of it needs to be done when the school is in session, or when we have more access to people, provided that is done quickly, we are probably not endangering anything, but nonetheless, the pressure is on to get that done,” he said.
School board member Becky Hamman questioned the city’s contact tracing at the school.
“It became a real hardship for the teachers and administrators in the morning,” she said.
Hamman said the increased number of COVID-19 cases in the district is a “fear factor” for teachers and administrators.
Westhill has had the most cases of the virus so far, with more than 20 positive results since school opened two months ago.
In a recent poll of about 100 teachers at Westhill, the three most common concerns listed were “district transparency,” “proper ventilation” and “contact tracing protocols.”
On Friday, Lucero said “All proper procedures and protocols are being followed.”
“In reviewing all of the facts related to this particular case with the Stamford Department of Health, and in keeping with guidance from the State Department of Health, there was no need to close the school in this instance,” she said.
The latest figures released Thursday afternoon show 47 new cases across the school district over the last seven days, as well as 208 people in quarantine as a result.
Combined with the 44 cases the week prior, the new cases bring the district’s daily rate per 100,000 students and staff to roughly 35 — well over the state threshold for a district to be considered high risk.
The state does not have rules for school districts deemed high risk. But updated recommendations released by the state Department of Education late last month state: “At the level of 25 new cases per 100,000 per day or more, (the Department of Public Health) recommends that district administrators, medical advisors, and local health departments discuss the appropriateness of an increase in remote learning, in the context of the additional considerations.”
On Thursday Lucero reported in a communication to staff that the virus had been passed from one person to another inside a school, saying it was the “first evidence of an inschool transmission.”
Lucero indicated the transmission was from a student to a staff member. She did not identify the school where it occurred.
The school was not closed. Lucero said if another case of an in-school transmission is discovered despite health protocols being followed, “we will consider temporarily transitioning to remote learning at that school for a specific period of time.”
But she said closing the school was not required by this week’s transmission.
“Given the unique circumstances of this incident, it is not recommended we do so at this time,” Lucero wrote.
“Please know that this case was likely the result of the need for the two individuals (the original positive case and the close contact who has now tested positive) to be closer than six feet apart, in order to support the student as per the staff member’s job responsibilities,” she wrote.
On Friday, Lucero said the transmission was made due to unusual circumstances.
“If we discover a transmission in a school despite all protocols being followed, we would consider closing that school,” she said. “However, the circumstances of this case were unique because the staff and student were not able to maintain the six feet of social distance.”