Opinions

Take it from a doctor: Anchorage schools made the right calls on COVID

Our community owes an enormous debt of gratitude to Anchorage School District nurses, teachers and leaders. Time and again, they have shown up for the community during the pandemic, threading the needle between the dual exigencies of public health and public education. In March 2020, ASD made the difficult decision not to bring our children back to school in person after spring break, helping signal to the community the gravity of the situation we were facing. The district delivered equipment and meals, teachers and parents adapted, and education carried on at home. Later, in January 2021, Anchorage seniors were struggling to find vaccination appointments; ASD Health Services created a mass vaccination clinic for them.

When flu season threatened to compound the situation each fall, school nurses were out there giving vaccines to all in the community who wanted them. ASD teachers and staff undoubtedly harbored fears for their own safety when our students returned in-person in the spring of 2021, and still they stepped up. This fall, Superintendent Deena Bishop made the decision to continue requiring masks in schools — despite fierce criticism from multiple quarters. A tough decision, but the right one. Through another significant step, on-site testing is now available in every school.

This month, the district has shown up again. On Nov. 2, the CDC recommended COVID-19 vaccine for ages 5-11, and the very next day, ASD nurses were vaccinating children at the Anchorage School District Education Center. Think about that: That effort took extraordinary organization, foresight and flexibility. Vaccination wasn’t something that the school district was obligated to take on. Their nurses are overwhelmed and budgets are limited. They might easily and justifiably have decided that vaccinations were the task of the health system, not the schools. Community health would be the poorer for it.

ASD nurses are already charged with essential tasks each day: They administer medications, help with feeding tubes, and facilitate school-based health clinics. Even during a pandemic, students fall on playgrounds or become ill for a variety of reasons that require attention. I recently was a parent volunteer at our child’s school during vision screening. The nurse prepared individual forms for every student; she organized teachers and volunteers; and three grades (six classes) had their eyes checked and referrals completed within the space of two hours, with minimal effect on instruction in each classroom. Somehow, nurses, teachers and staff have all found time in the midst of this “normal” heroism to reduce the impact of COVID-19 on our community.

Certainly, I have questioned ASD decisions along the way. In September, ASD began allowing unvaccinated students to attend school even while family members at home have COVID. The timing of the decision could not have been more unfortunate: The following day, Providence Alaska Medical Center announced the need to ration care. Would it have been better to wait for the change in quarantine policy until hospital numbers were lower, children could all be vaccinated, and in-school testing was widely available? From a public health standpoint, yes. Is quarantine still important? Absolutely. Children who are close contacts, and who are not fully vaccinated, should quarantine at home. School is an exception, and if families choose to send their children to school, they should also have their students tested, for the safety of teachers and fellow students.

But in all of this, I have come to recognize a bigger picture: Good public health depends upon good education. It depends upon a population of individuals who have learned the skills to distinguish reliable from unreliable sources of information, to question and verify what they hear, and to analyze risk using the most objective data available. ASD has gone above and beyond in order to promote our community’s well-being; the school district has shouldered the tasks of mitigating immediate pandemic risks and educating students. To Dr. Bishop, ASD Health Services leadership including Jennifer Patronus and Kathy Bell, and all of the district’s staff, nurses and teachers, thank you.

Allene Whitney, MD, is a family physician in Anchorage and a mother with two children in the Anchorage School District.

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