Lee County School Board wants to prepare parents for COVID-19 at school

Lee County schools are telling parents to be ready for their plan B when the coronavirus hits schools. Superintendent Greg Adkins said it will be “rocky.” A school board member said there will be risks if parents send their kids back to school.

The School District of Lee County wanted to make sure parents understood the possible risk of in-person school to start the year.

“We are the educators,” Adkins said. “We are obviously not the health and medical experts.”

Lee County School Board got health and medical experts together for a Q & A presentation Monday ahead of the school year. The questions centered on how school principals should respond to teachers and students who become sick or they suspect are sick.

“We recommend immediately isolating upon knowing that you have symptoms or determining that your child is symptomatic,” said Adkins. “So, that way as soon as that happens, we’re only looking at the 48 hours before symptoms start.”

It’s a 48-hour investigation for contact tracers to go back in time, hopefully pinpointing where a teacher or student picked up COVID-19.

Working mom Candi Snyder watched the presentation and says she wished she heard more definitive answers.

“It’s just its very scary to think I’m going to throw them out into the wild without knowing what the real structure and containment will be,” Snyder said.

Despite her fear, Snyder told us she doesn’t want to leave her two teenage girls home alone, so she plans to send them back to school.

“Nobody knows,” Snyder said. “Nobody knows what the right thing to do is.”

Mother Yami Garcia said she won’t take that chance.

“I’m going to do the home connect,” Yami Garcia said.

She doesn’t believe the District is prepared to welcome kids back to class.

“And then my kids bringing it home to me or bringing it home to my husband or to his grandmother that suffers from asthma or their grandfather that does suffer from diabetes,” Garcia said. “So I don’t want to give it to them, so I rather keep my kids home safe.”

The District is creating different scenarios that would spark the shutdown of a classroom, a school and the entire school district.

Adkins said he doesn’t think they’ll be able to think of every possibility, so he’s asking teachers and parents to be flexible.

The deadline to decide whether to send your kids back to school is Thursday, July 30.