Norovirus

Every major news station sent vans to Arlington to cover an outbreak of norovirus at one of our elementary schools. Yesterday 100+ kids were absent with violent vomiting and diarrhea.  And more went home during the day with the same symptoms.  Six teachers were out too.  Usually if a school has more than 10% of the kids out sick they close the school.  I'm not sure why that school is open today.  Extra custodians apparently scrubbed the school from top to bottom last night.  But kids are contagious the day before they exhibit symptoms and then for three more  days after that.  This is one of the elementary schools that feeds into Noah's middle school.  So most of the kids at Noah's school have siblings that attend the infested school. And then there are also the siblings at the high school.  I think we should have shut down the district today and tomorrow, had maintenance do a thorough cleaning of every building, and then come back and start again next week.  I'm stuck in an all day science curriculum meeting with all of the fourth grade teachers in the district, however,  all four of the 4th grade teachers from the infected school are missing. I wonder if the substitutes that were assigned to cover their classes cancelled because they didn't want to take a chance on being sick.

You're probably wondering how I'm able to blog during this meeting, but it's horribly disorganized and pointless since half of the district's fourth grade teachers are being laid off.  So six people who are being involuntarily transferred to fourth grade don't know yet that they're going to be teaching this material.  It's only half an hour into this long day and I'm already ready to pull my hair out.  Maybe I'll post more later if I continue to be bored to tears.