January 19, 2007Local planners go through school
closing scenario to prepare for their response.What would happen in Lenawee
County if a pandemic flu or other disease outbreak forced
schools to close?That scenario was given a serious look Thursday by school superintendents, county health officials, law enforcement and emergency management staff in a two hour exercise at the Lenawee County Health Department.Dealing with an epidemic as serious as the 1918 flu outbreak, which resulted in orders closing schools and public meeting places, is something beyond the experience of today’s generation of government and business leaders. Exercises like the one conducted Thursday are intended to provide a base for an organized response to a situation that could quickly become chaotic.“You certainly don’t want to go through this process while you’re dealing with a situation,” said Michael Kight, Lenawee County health officer.The group of leaders assembled Thursday went through a flow chart of events that would lead up to government steps to try to slow an epidemic by shutting down schools.Our strategy is, how can we delay the spread of the flu until a vaccine can be prepared?”Currently it takes six months to produce flu vaccines. Closing schools would be much more than signing a document in the health department office.School leaders have to be involved as informed participants in the process as well as law enforcement and emergency services.Questions were asked about how a prolonged school closing would affect businesses if workers had to stay home with their children, Anderson said. How education might be continued at home was discussed, And how to prevent children from congregating at malls or elsewhere if they were locked out of classrooms.Asking those questions and planning responses to what-ifs will help if something like a pandemic flu sweeps across the country.“There’s no way to totally prepare for it, but we’ll be able to deal with it,” Anderson said.“It was a good discussion,” said James Hartley, Madison schools superintendent.We had no idea a pandemic could close schools for eight to 12 weeks, That raises questions about school finances, meeting requirements for graduation and grade advancements that have to be dealt with at the state and national levels. But there are steps to be taken at the local level to reduce confusion and the chances for panic.Lenawee County schools are in the process of acquiring new communications equipment, called the Honeywell Instant Alert, that would be a valuable tool in emergency situations like a pandemic flu as well as day-to-day school operations.Every parent in Lenawee County could be contacted in five minutes or less. The computerized system can telephone and e-mail messages to all
families in each school district, or to families by grade level or even by groups as small as a volleyball team’s parents.Superintendents in 11 of the 12 public school districts in the county are committed to pursuing the system, and some have already won approval from school boards. The Madison School District is now trying to update contact information for families to have current telephone and cellular telephone numbers and e-mail and computer messaging addresses. Each family can receive messages through three or four different mediums and locations, to quickly make them aware of weather related delays or closings, arrival times for buses returning from sporting events or trips, or other information.Hartley said he expects the $2 per student cost of the system for Madison to be recovered just in savings from being able to send report cards home with students. Instead of mailing grade reports, families can be alerted to look for them when their children return home that day.http://www.lenconnect.com/articles/2007/01/20/news/news04.txt