Schools
Barnum Woods ‘Back to Normal’ After Virus
The school was cleaned thoroughly after an outbreak of a gastrointestinal illness last week.
After a gastrointestinal virus affected students at , the district discussed procedures they took to cleanup after the incident and said that everything is “back to normal.”
The Nassau County Department of Health (DOH) that they were investigating a at the school. Parents of students at that the district sent out an email that afternoon confirming the virus. Lawrence Eisenstein, Commissioner of Health, said in an email to county officials on March 9 that “over 175 staff and students appear involved,” according to Newsday.
Trustee Marcee Rubinstein raised a question about overtime in regards to the cleanup and what procedures were taken “cleaning down the building” at the Thursday Board of Education work session at the .
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Patrick Pizzo, Director of School Facilities and Operations for the district, said that they did what is called a deep cleaning procedure – something that is done regularly.
“It is something that we do every week anyway,” he continued. “So what we did was we saw the issue developing, we went right to that deep cleaning schedule Thursday and Friday.”
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Superintendent Louis DeAngelo said that they cleaned with the regular staff from 3:30 p.m. to midnight.
“It didn’t involve overtime,” he stated at the meeting.
“Now, the reason why we were able to do this within the confines of the normal schedule is because it is part of our normal routine, and that includes all of the high touch areas,” Pizzo said. “There’s a whole procedure we do in regards to a two-step peroxide cleaner, a disinfectant -- which disinfectant you use is based on what you are doing, what you are addressing.”
“This is something that we are ready for,” said Pizzo, adding that they also do yearly trainings where they deal with these types of issues. “All we do is we say ‘implement the plan.’ We were ready and the guys did outstanding.”
When questioned about the school attendance on the Monday after the outbreak, DeAngelo said that it was “perfect.” “We are all back to normal,” he added.
Was the cleaning effort by the district sufficient enough? Tell us in the comments.
