The Paton-Churdan School District continues to meet on-site, while also providing several mitigation efforts to prevent spreading COVID-19.

Superintendent Kreg Lensch says one of the main precautions that are in place are ways to minimize group gatherings and contacts. 

“Your lunch time, where we’re having kids eat in their individual rooms to make sure we’re not in a large group in that way. All of our rooms have set kids up in cohorts to make sure that if there was an exposure (to the virus) our goal is for an entire room of students not to have to go into quarantine if we can control and make that just three or four kids. It’s hard to say it but then that’s a win for your district, you have less kids out.”

Other COVID-19 precautions include assigned seating for students to help conduct contact tracing if needed, providing all students with water bottles and have closed all water fountains, providing all staff and students with face masks, which Lensch notes are highly encouraged to be worn, but not mandatory. He talks about keeping staff as protected as possible.

“I told them from the get-go that they’re more likely to infect each other than probably get infected from one of the students, in my opinion. So they have to make sure that they’re social distancing and when they can’t, that they’re wearing masks. They are doing a great job with that.”  

Lensch adds teachers are constantly wiping down hard surfaces and the district also has electrostatic sprayers to help with deep cleaning of classrooms and other surfaces. He believes the district has done what it can to prevent further spreading the virus and he appreciates the staff and students for following the district’s guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as the Iowa Department of Public Health and Greene County Public Health.