COVID-19 mitigation at school

SIDE EFFECTS OF SAFETY

McLean implements safety procedures to protect those returning to school

NYLA MARCOTT

ONLINE NEWS EDITOR

To prevent the spread of COVID-19, McLean High School followed FCPS guidelines to implement new health measures for in-person students. Although designed to protect students and staff, the measures have altered learning and changed the school environment.

Teachers and students are required to follow safety procedures, including wearing masks, using one-way stairwells, eating in socially distanced cafeterias and avoiding the use of drinking fountains.

While students were initially required to be seated six feet apart from each other when they returned to classrooms in March, new CDC guidelines combined with a reduction in community transmission rates allowed FCPS to reduce this requirement to three feet on April 8.

The safety measures are designed to allow in-person students to learn with as little disruption as possible.

“Other than the fact that we wear masks and can’t be in rooms with too many people, my learning experience as a student has not changed much,” sophomore Olivia Jang said.

Some students report that in-person schooling is less enjoyable because many of their peers chose to remain virtual and those who did return have to remain at a distance.

“The new rules have basically completely interrupted and ruined the experience of being a student as they place extreme limits on social interactions,” sophomore Freya Milbury said.

Math teacher Kelly Bozzi attributes the challenges in interacting with one another to the circumstances of the entire year.

“Students don’t know each other as well after being virtual for so long, so classes are a lot more quiet,” Bozzi said. “I miss the chatter and friendships you usually see grow…throughout the year.”

Despite efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19, there have been some positive cases at McLean. People who were within six feet of someone with COVID-19 are contact traced and required to quarantine for two weeks. Students are not required to take COVID-19 tests, so if a student does not report their symptoms, the school does not trace their contacts.

The first case was confirmed shortly after the return to school began.

“My parents first received a phone call from the principal letting me know I had been in contact with someone who had tested positive for COVID-19,” senior Christian Carroll said. “They debriefed my parents, telling me to stay home for the next two weeks.”

Families were notified about this case via a schoolwide email on March 16, which caused some to reconsider their return to school.

“I started out school in person but after the email was sent out, the experience affected my decision on returning to school,” sophomore Olivia Tennant said.

Carroll switched back to virtual learning out of concern that COVID-19 cases would continue to occur in school.

“I figured it’s not worth it anymore,” Carroll said. “If it happened within the first week of school, it could happen again, so I decided to stay home.”

While the implemented COVID-19 mitigation procedures have protected the McLean High School community from any widespread outbreaks, they have resulted in an unusual learning environment this year.

“People are more cognizant of the space around them,” Principal Ellen Reilly said.

The new three-foot social distancing requirement enables schools to offer inperson learning four days a week, which began at McLean on April 20, meaning the building may start to feel more lively soon, with most students who have chosen to attend in-person opting to do so four days a week.

As of April 19, 934 of McLean’s 2,293 students have opted to return in person. Of those, 863 said they will attend school four days a week.

To prepare for additional students in the building, custodians added desks and chairs to classrooms. Core freshman classes were affected the most, as it is the only grade with more than 50% of its students attending in person.

“Before, we would see so many people all interacting, and now that students are back in the building, it’s just not that noise level that we used to have,” Reilly said. “It’s not the crowd level that we used to have.”