For Eight Nashville School Employees, Virus ‘A Real Deal’
James Nichols walked into Nashville School District Superintendent Doug Graham's office wearing a cloth mask and then kept it on, despite everyone in the room except me having already been sick and recovered, mostly, from COVID-19.
"How you doin'?" Nichols said. "I'm the one that made 'em all sick."
It started off as a light-hearted exchange, but Nichols turned serious when I asked him about wearing the mask despite the fact that he's already had the disease.
"I don't want to make anybody else sick," he said. "I got a guy that is still in the hospital, and I've felt like I put him there, and it bothers me every night, so I'm going to wear it."
Nichols, the director of transportation, facilities and athletics, can't be certain he's the one who spread the disease.
Here's what is known. Eight Nashville school employees became sick with COVID-19 this summer. Graham was hospitalized and almost needed a ventilator. The assistant superintendent, Joe Kell, spent three weeks hooked to one, and at times it was doing 100 percent of his breathing. As of the day before the interview Aug. 7, he was in rehab walking between parallel bars.
Most of the cases likely came from a meeting of a dozen people on June 10. Nichols went to the meeting after administrators learned one of his maintenance workers was sick. Two days later, he informed Graham he was sick. Maybe he caught it from the maintenance worker, or maybe from somewhere else. Soon the disease had spread to Graham, Kell, elementary principal Rick Rebsamen, and the school's technology director, all of whom were at the meeting. Kell's and Rebsamen's wives, both of whom work for the district, also became sick.
Everyone except Kell, 59, is back at work. But Graham, also 59, said he still wasn't 100 percent recovered two months after that meeting.
Graham said he had taken the disease seriously beforehand. The dozen attendees of the state-required meeting had worn masks and kept their distance from each other. However, there were times when they might be closer than six feet, and afterwards he and Nichols went to lunch.
"I tell everybody that I've talked to since then, this is not a Donald Trump thing," he said. "This is not a political thing. It's a real deal."
Arkansas schools plan to open Monday, and I do not envy Gov. Asa Hutchinson or other decision makers on this one.
For young people, the virus rarely is life-threatening. As of Aug. 18, no Arkansan under age 25 had died from it. How much of a sacrifice should they make in terms of lost education, lost opportunities and lost experiences?
Let's not pretend a third-grader with a working single mother is getting the same education alone in front of a computer that he would at school. The longer he spends away from the classroom, the more it will affect his long-term education. For some children, school may be their safest place, and it's the most likely to report signs of abuse.
But schools are also filled with older people teachers, administrators, bus drivers, others who are much more endangered. If one summertime meeting led to what happened in Nashville, what will happen when the halls are filled with germ-carrying students?
It's not surprising that 83 percent of respondents to a recent Arkansas Education Association survey, most of them current teachers, said they were concerned about their health, while 87 percent were concerned about their family's health. Asked if the disease had made them consider quitting the profession or retiring early, less than 37 percent of the respondents said "No." The AEA has called for an online start to the school year.
What will happen as schools reopen? We can assume some kids will be infected, and that almost all will be OK. We can expect some adults will become infected, and some will not be OK. We can predict that some schools might have to close their doors for a while. We can wonder if all of them will. We can hope this will end soon.
And we can be certain that Nashville's James Nichols will be wearing his mask. He doesn't want to make anybody else sick, assuming he did in the first place.
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