The Polk County Board of Education as part of the process for making updates on policies tabled one for review until their October meeting when they approve the measure.

A complete overhaul of the policy was needed to ensure the health and safety of students in the future that was previously written when the biggest health concern of a disease that could spread unintentionally was HIV.

Superintendent Laurie Atkins explained that previous language that referred to the single virus threat at the time has now been updated to focus more on any particular threat that may come along, and provides some guidelines for how to handle students and faculty who become ill. The previous policy also provided language that made it unlawful for the board to deny someone employment because they contracted a communicable disease, which in the old language was focused on HIV.

The new language greatly updates the policy, bringing it into contemporary times as the district is among the entities that were first shutdown when the COVID-19 pandemic began, and have since re-opened and been dealing with cases on campuses among students and staff.

Among the language changes that matter is a broader definition of “infectious disease,” education opportunities for employees to learn about diseases and their impact, how to handle notification of transmission, dealing PSD personnel and youth who are sick and their absences from school, making sure that adequate supplies are available, prevention measures and protocols in the future for how to respond district-wide to communicable illnesses that are spreading through the community.

It requires an individual (or parent, if the case may be a student) to notify administration as soon as possible to mitigate the threat to others within a school building, how the notifications move upward, and take up the proper response utilizing the Georgia Department of Education’s Decision Matrix. It also provides a way for the system to communicate with others about the potential threat of a virus.

The board approved during the September session to table the policy for a month for review and any amendments or corrections that may be required, and will reconsider it during the October 2020 regular session coming up.