Students encounter daily COVID-19 cautionary measures at Paso Robles High School
A tablet sized screen yelling “Normal temperature”, is something Paso Robles High School (PRHS) students have become very familiar with since the beginning of hybrid learning on March 16, 2020.
In order to keep students at low risk for contracting COVID-19, PRHS has put safety precautions in place. Daily temperature checks before entering campus, a required online questionnaire students must complete, socially distant classrooms, and masking up, are all things students encounter on a daily basis.
Temperature checks are located at the front entrance by the library, and the gate leading onto campus from the student parking lot. The library entrance checks students and staff’s temperature by a small laser near the wrist, and the parking lot entrance requires students to alight their foreheads with the tablet in order to get a temperature read.
“The temperature check is just a small part of how we work to keep all staff and students safe and healthy. If we verify a student or staff member has a temperature during the screening process they are immediately sent home,” said School Nurse Kelly Sauret.
Students with a temperature of 100.4 or higher will be sent home and asked to quarantine for 10 days or until they receive a negative COVID test.
Nurse Kelly has been very involved with keeping exposure to COVID-19 at a minimum on campus; she has been particularly involved with contact tracing.
“As soon as we are notified of a positive case, we begin contact tracing. We determine the last time the student was on campus or participated in their sport if they are an athlete, and whether they’ve had close contact with anyone while in class or at practice/game. If they have been in contact with anyone, those students or staff are notified and placed in quarantine from school based on the CDC and public health guidelines.”
Another step Paso Robles High School has put into place is a questionnaire titled “Daily Health Self-Screening Form”, which can be found in StudentSquare, an element to the Aries portal. The questionnaire inquires if students have come into contact with anyone who has tested positive for Covid-19 in the past 14 days, and also asks students to evaluate their personal health to identify if anything is out of the ordinary.
“[If students answer “yes” to either of these questions,] they are pulled from class and sent to a triage room. A staff member will go over the questions with the student to determine if the questions were answered “no” incorrectly or if they did in fact mean “YES” to the question/s. If the answer was or is yes, the student will be sent home,” said Sauret.
As of April 1, 2020, Paso Robles High School has had 10 Staff cases and 37 Student cases, for a total of 47 COVID-19 positive tests. If PRHS reaches over 80 student cases, the school will revert back to distance learning, Staff and admin are doing all they can to prevent this from happening.
