Today Te Ao Marama School's roll has bounced back and about 50 per cent of students are in class while the remaining students are still isolating, or waiting for their test results. Some parents are taking extra precautions and opting to keep their children home.
A team of six staff focused on managing the school's Covid response were rushed off their feet several days last week contacting parents whose children were close contacts asking them to pick them up immediately after a new case had been identified.
"The school had planned extensively, but what eventuated last week was really impossible to predict. We were prepared for a wave but that was like at tsunami dropped from above in terms of how it impacted on us."
While some of the students had probably caught it at the school, others had caught it from parents or other places in the community. "Our cases I really don't think are linked to one particular event or one initial source."
Grey said after the latest case was notified on Friday, impacting 70 children, they had just 93 students left at the school.
The school has an open-plan learning environment, which effectively means that in the Waikato any child in the same room as the Covid case for more than two hours is deemed a close contact.
The school was taking a pragmatic response and felt it was safer for them to say the entire room was affected, Grey said.
But with test results were taking an average of about five days to get processed, it made it difficult for schools to respond in a timely manner, he said.
"For us the game changer would be if RATs were now available for students that are showing symptoms, that we know have gone and got tested, but we can't act until a positive case is confirmed, especially when in our environment it is impacting 60/70/80 families. It does create a bit of a flow-on effect."
Grey said the school community had been incredibly supportive and parents had been very quick and calm about collecting their children once they had been identified as a close contact.
