By Dewey Terrill
JC Post
When the school year begins Monday in USD 475 best practices for preventing COVID-19 include basic measures. They are the wearing of face masks, social distancing, washing and sanitizing hands and when possible leveraging the use of fresh air.
David Wild, Chief Operations Officer for USD 475, said those measures are a focus in school building operations, along with allowing only essential visitors into facilities, and breaking students up into small cohort groups.
Wild said there is also a cleaning aspect, called Enhanced Clean. "That is where we will have a dedicated custodian, at least one in every school this year that will do nothing but wipe down contact points throughout the school on an ongoing basis with a chemical called Virex, which we've used in the school for a number of years." Wild added that it is a hospital and school-grade decontaminant that will be in every classroom. That version of Virex will have a three minute kill time for COVID-19. "The enhanced custodian team will have a version of it called Virex Plus that has a one minute kill time, and then the evening custodians will go through and sanitize the schools at night."
Electrostatic disinfection will also occur, said Wild. "That is where you have an electrically charged vapor particles where they'll fog the school. It'll adhere itself to all the contact surfaces." The virus is killed when it evaporates.
USD 475 will have control upgrades for the HVAC system beginning shortly after Labor Day. Wild said they will be able to remove all the air in a school building by zones and replenish it with fresh air from outside. " Wild expects the District to try that procedure in the middle of the day. "Because if anybody is infected with the virus we don't want to wait until the end of the day to purge the virus. We're going to try it in the middle of the day. May lead to a little bit of lack of comfort in the building as people feel the temperature change or the humidity level change. We think it will take about an hour to do that process, but that little bit of discomfort I think will be a reassurance that the air is being re-purged and replenished."
The District also has a large supply of hand sanitizer for use in buildings.