Campus Caution

Santa Fe Public Schools administrators and district leaders have summer homework ahead to ensure the beginning of the next school year rolls out smoothly and safely.

Veronica Garcia, outgoing superintendent, says the successful reopening of schools in the spring has earned parents’ trust to safely resume full in-person learning in August.

“We’re expecting pretty much 99% back in classrooms,” Garcia tells SFR. “Very few parents have opted for remote learning.”

Rewind six months to when Garcia and her team were fielding strong concerns over further spread of COVID-19 in district buildings. Reflecting on the two months of in-person learning in April and May, the district identified the number of transmissions that occurred in its buildings.

SFPS collected data for every positive case of COVID-19 found on its campuses since schools allowed willing students back into buildings the week of April 6. Subsequent contact tracing found few instances of transmission in buildings during the short period of in-person learning in the second half of the spring semester.

The numbers, which SFPS compiled at SFR’s request, show 39 positive cases among students and staff within school buildings. That’s among an average of 6,500 students and staff who were back in facilities at the height of in-person learning last spring. Nine of those 39 cases were related to previous cases in one of the school buildings. In some instances, the positive case was related to a single transmission, but in one instance a positive case at Kearny Elementary School in late April was related to three other infections.

Though Capital High School had the highest number of positive cases (nine) over the semester, no documented transmissions resulted from them. Santa Fe High School reported a total of five cases during the time students were in the building, with two separate instances of transmission—one in early April and the second in mid-May.

Garcia tells SFR that school nurses followed New Mexico’s Department of Health guidelines when someone on campus tested positive as part of SFPS’ surveillance testing program. As part of the contact tracing process, nurses notified and monitored people who came in contact with the infected individual.

At the state level, a PED spokeswoman tells SFR via email the department has not collected the number of cases by district, “only the state as a whole and only on a weekly basis.”

“One reason for that was concern that for very small districts/schools, those numbers could present a [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act] violation (as a student/staff member could be easily identified even without naming,)” the spokeswoman writes in an email to SFR. However, PED calculates school-based spread statewide for the 2020-2021 school year at just 2.4%.

With schools slated to welcome all students back to classrooms on Aug. 6, the number of people in buildings will almost double. PED guidelines for the return to in-person learning are still pending.

Meanwhile, parents remain concerned for their children’s safety, according to Jasmin Holmstrup, chief development officer with La Familia Medical Center, which ran a back-to-school vaccination event last weekend.

“There was a real push to vaccinate communities of color and underserved communities,” Holmstrup says of the event.

As part of its preparations, SFPS has spent almost $5.4 million to better equip schools to prevent spread, including $1.7 million to hire additional custodians and another $1.5 million to install plexiglass screens.

“Air quality was going to be a big part of this,” says Gabe Romero, the district’s executive director of operations. “You know, being inside a building with hundreds of students and staff.”

Gregory Frostad, director of the state’s Safe & Healthy Schools Bureau, says despite the low rate of documented transmissions, children remain at risk in schools.

“There is not much evidence to support schools as a driver of community spread of the virus,” Frostad writes via PED’s spokeswoman to SFR. “Evidence suggests that child-to-child transmission is relatively rare but is still a significant risk, which is why we continue to implement COVID safe practices.”