A Lincoln Elementary School student receives a temperature check on the first day of school. P-J photo by Cameron Hurst

One month into Jamestown Public Schools’ hybrid reopening plan, the district has yet to report a confirmed, an on-site case of COVID-19.

That information is a welcome realization for the district’s nursing coordinator Jill Muntz.

“I think our protocols are all in place and they seem to be working okay,” said Muntz, a doctor of nursing practice. “There are a lot of questions that go back and forth because even though you consider every scenario, there’s always one that comes your way that you haven’t thought of.”

But even though the district has made it through the first four weeks of in-person instruction, Muntz, like other health care professionals in education, fears the impact of flu season amid the current global pandemic.

“We don’t want to overburden our health care resources with flu when we’re dealing with COVID,” she said. “There’s a term that’s being used, ‘twindemic.’ We could see people coming in with flu and COVID, but we don’t want to overburden our healthcare resources with flu when it is preventable. That’s why we’re pushing the vaccine.”

Receiving the flu vaccine this year, she noted, is as important as it’s ever been.

“Vaccination is very important,” Muntz said, noting that the district will hold a flu clinic for staff members. “It’s not a live virus, you can’t get the flu from the shot, but it does take a few weeks to get immunity to it.”

Luckily, the mitigation strategies for the novel coronavirus also are the same as the flu.

“We’re hoping to keep people safe with strategies we’re already using,” Muntz explained. “You can have an exposure to COVID and end up with all of these symptoms. That’s hard for the health care provider. But, if you’re vaccinated, we can focus on COVID testing. There’s going to be a lot of testing needed for both.”

“What we’re really trying to do is protect very young and very old,” she added. “Kids under six months are high risk and have a lot of complications and can’t get vaccinated. But, if we get vaccinated, we protect young children and our older population, they can have a high enough dose to protect them even better. Those are the populations we really want to protect.”

As for her nursing staff, Muntz couldn’t be more proud of how the district has responded in keeping students and staff safe.

“We work very well as a team here,” she said. “I’ve been working very closely with the medical standpoint with human resources on staff issues, nurses, health and attendance staff and absences over the phone. We’ve done pretty well. We did a lot of training at the end of August and at the beginning of September, teaching teachers about infection controls, the use of personal protective equipment, and what we expected with the screening procedures.”

The Chautauqua County Department of Health and Human Services has also been a great help, she noted.

“We pulled the county in right off the bat as soon as we knew what the guidelines were,” she said. “That’s been very helpful. That way parents aren’t hearing one thing from us and another from them. We’re trying to be very consistent as a county. A lot of school nurses have reached out to others across the county and the school nurses have done a phenomenal job as far as the whole county goes. I’m very grateful for everybody’s help in this.”

Still, there have been challenges: federal, state and county guidelines are not always “congruent,” Muntz noted.

“We’re following state health and state education recommendations,” she said. “Not only is the school district involved, but all the health care providers are also playing a role in this. There has been a lot of conversation between medical providers.”

Additionally, Muntz is tasked with having to populate the district’s portion of the state’s COVID-19 School Report Card — located at schoolcovidreportcard.health.ny.gov — which intakes data from the county health department and testing labs in addition to school districts. Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the measure on the district’s first day of school on Sept. 8.

“That has been an added burden,” she noted. “Our communication with the health department has been growing and changing because of the need to do. Initially, the health department was notifying us of any cases — positive cases that might be an issue with the school because of close contact.”

Now the necessary stakeholders must report positive cases whether students are physically in school or not and not just for students, but for staff.

To make sure the virus is not contracted on school property, Muntz explained that the district is being overcautious.

“We are sending a lot of kids and staff home,” she said. “The message is don’t come to school to work if you’re sick. We’re sending a lot of people to health care provider just to document if its COVID related or not and the health care providers have been wonderful. We want the public to have confidence that we are on top of it because we are tracking everything.”

Muntz urged parents to “bare with” the district due to the precautions.

“If we are asking for a visit to the health care provider, even for a pre-existing condition, it’s only so that we can document if these symptoms are something overlooked if consistent,” she said. “Then if anything worsens or changes, we send them back to the health care providers. We don’t want to overburden health care providers. Same with the staff. For some staff that might have a runny nose, they can attest that this is pre-existing.

She added, “We just want to sort all of that out especially with flu coming — it’s going to be an added challenge.”

The district will also continue to be transparent as possible, she noted.

“We are working very hard on transparency,” she said. “We want to get information out. The lines of communication between the health department and the parents are good right now. If they can communicate with us, and we can communicate with them it will make things so much better.”

Parents are encouraged to reach out to Muntz at jill.a.muntz@jpsny.org with any questions.