LAKELAND – Some Lakeland Catholic School Division (LCSD) schools are being impacted by COVID-19 cases.
Associate superintendent Pamela Guilbault confirmed there are three different facilities in the Bonnyville and Cold Lake area that have students quarantining as a result of a positive coronavirus test.
“That’s affecting three different classes,” she told the board of trustees during their April 21 meeting. “We’ve also had two different bus routes affected by quarantine measures and that’s due just recently to positive cases.”
Superintendent Joe Arruda explained that when a student who takes the bus to and from school receives a positive result, they inform the families of those in the three rows ahead, behind, and across the aisle from them.
“We have a seating plan for every single bus so we know where every single student sits. Once we know from Alberta Health that one of our students tests positive, we tell our bussing supervisor. We tell her who the student is, she runs the (name), and we call all the families,” he detailed.
Protocols that were put into place are going to be continued, stated Guilbault, including only three volunteers being allowed into schools at one time.
Extracurricular sports are also not being offered in their facilities at this time.
“We want to ensure that our students and staff are healthy and control exposure as best we can,” she explained. “Curricular sports and physical education, those types of activities, are still happening and they’re following school protocols. But extracurricular sports and activities aren’t (happening) at this time.”
Since the Christmas break, LCSD has only had one other instance of a COVID-19 case being linked to one of its schools.
Notre Dame High School (NDHS) was placed on the province’s school outbreak list at the beginning of March when it was believed there were three positive cases linked to the facility. It turned out that two were false positives and only one person had COVID-19 at the time.
Guilbault stressed the division’s low numbers and the lack of spread in the most recent cases was because of a couple of reasons.
“Overall, having three classes and two bus routes being affected in the middle of what is rapidly rising cases has been very good. We can attribute that to the diligence of our staff and community members in making sure that we’re following COVID-19 protocols, hand washing, hand sanitizing, and masking wearing.”
