The Washington School District is taking steps to keep students and staff healthy amid discussions of influenza and COVID-19. Superintendent Willie Stone says the district is encouraging students and staff to take steps to prevent the spread of illness, “Right now it’s recommended that we just continue to do work as usual. Some of the things we’re doing: we’re requesting students to frequently wash their hands; avoid close contact with people who are sick; avoid touching their eyes, and nose, and mouth, and that’s the one that for me it’s been a challenge. I started trying to do that the other day and I think within 10 minutes I touched my face five times.”

He adds that extra cleaning steps are being taken. All of the school buildings are going to be fogged with disinfectants and the district is purchasing their own equipment to continue to do this throughout the rest of the school year, “We just want to try to make sure that that takes care of things. The disinfectant that we have, they are saying is proven to kill influenza A, which right now that’s a huge deal for us at school. At least at Washington Schools we have kids missing and they are missing four or five days with it. It’s not just a ‘I’m sick, stay home for a day and come back to school.’ It’s a long-term problem. So, we’re wanting to do that to work on that. Influenza B and then the COVID, it’s supposed to kill all of those things. So, we’ll go through and fog all of our classrooms. We’re also going to fog all of our buses.” The fogging will be done daily.

The foggers will again be used when seasonal influenza returns next school year. Stone says they’re working to keep people informed and encourages people to prevent the spread of germs.