Des Moines school nurse warns district to prepare for omicron-driven staffing shortages
Des Moines Public Schools will continue to enforce a face mask mandate and other COVID-19 mitigation measures but does not plan to pause extracurricular activities or put in place stricter restrictions as a new wave of the coronavirus sweeps through Iowa.
The district's decision comes as case counts in the state's largest school district reflect a spike in positive tests — most likely from the more contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus — among students and teachers over winter break.
District employees are already on high alert and pushing for the district to do more. A school nurse warned the school board this week that the district should immediately begin preparing for even more staffing shortages than already.
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Omicron has and likely will continue to add to staffing shortages that have been plaguing education all school year — this time from too many staff being out sick at once or having to care for or quarantine with sick loved ones.
That's what's happened this week in and around Detroit, Atlanta, Newark, New Jersey, Milwaukee and elsewhere as school districts began 2022. Meanwhile, the threat of omicron in Chicago prompted the teachers' union there to vote to return to online learning, so the third-largest school district in the U.S. instead canceled classes Wednesday for most of its 330,000 students.
Staff shortages have already been a problem at schools across Iowa, and just Monday, schools in Davenport canceled class because of a bus driver shortage. And on Wednesday, the Des Moines district attributed sickness as one reason why buses were delayed.
The state reported Wednesday the most new cases over the previous week since November 2020, positivity rates are rising and after three weeks of declines, hospitalizations were back on the rise in Wednesday's update and exceeded all but one weekly update from 2021.
Roughly 2,500 of those new cases were in children under 18. They represent 13% of positive tests over the past 7 days.
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Roosevelt High School nurse Nicole Cable told the Des Moines school board Tuesday that "we really need to steel ourselves" for a "tsunami of cases" coming.
"The next one to two months are going to be unlike anything we’ve ever seen," Cable said. And "the hardest thus far we’ve faced in the pandemic."
She said the district should immediately begin preparing for how it would continue in-person education with moderate or critical staff shortages in schools, as well as how to manage staffing shortages in critical areas such as transportation and food service.
Cable said activities such as afterschool groups, sports events, pep rallies, dances and community involvement are important, "but if our goal is actually to preserve in-person instruction, then we need to start looking at what steps we can take right now to reduce those activities in the short-term."
Superintendent Tom Ahart said the district — which was the first to reinstate a mask mandate this fall after a federal court put a state prohibition on face coverings in schools — would stay vigilant but did not promise new strategies Tuesday.
"While it seems like an awful long marathon in a masked, partially virtual environment, it’s really important that we stay on top of this and not give up yet," Ahart said. "We have a long way to go to finish the year out strong and we need everybody healthy to do so."
Reported cases among staff and students in the district are significantly higher after winter break, according to the district's online dashboard.
The apparent spike in daily cases includes positive tests not reported during the winter break, said district spokesman Phil Roeder.
Wednesday's update still showed numbers of new cases that were almost two or three times higher than last reported in December.
Roeder said Wednesday's 60 new student cases and 27 new staff cases still include some carryover from winter break. Numbers released on Thursday and Friday and "should start to reflect a more apples-to-apples comparison with previous school days and we'll have a better indication of how many more cases we're seeing on average compared to prior to the holidays."
He added that demand at the two testing sites offered through Nomi Health has almost quadrupled since early December, from an average of between 200 and 300 tests each day to 600 a day starting December 22 and 854 on Monday.
Roeder said 13,500 tests were conducted from Oct. 1 through the end of December, with more than half, or about 7,000 in December.
Cable declined Wednesday to comment further, saying, "The demands of the job with the current community transmission are too great to spare any time."
Phillip Sitter covers education for the Ames Tribune, including Iowa State University and PreK-12 schools in Ames and elsewhere in Story County. Phillip can be reached via email at psitter@gannett.com. He is on Twitter @pslifeisabeauty.
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This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Des Moines schools don't plan to pause extracurriculars amid omicron
