Crews Clean School, Students Return After Illness

Students in Lincoln returned to school Tuesday (Feb. 5) after widespread illness forced school officials to cancel classes for four days.

Custodians in the Lincoln School District sanitized all three schools in the district for days in preparation for students to return.

“There was nothing that didn`t get touched. We scrubbed everything,” said custodian Christina Seward.

“Of course the bathrooms, all of the stall walls, the toilets, the floor, the sink and mirrors,” said Supt. Clay Hendrix. “Just everything, like soap dispensers, hand sanitizers, paper towel dispensers and everything needs to be at least sprayed with the bleach solution, and wiped down if at all possible.”

The custodial staff used 195 gallons of bleach and other sanitizers to disinfect everything.

“We used a special sanitizer on the markers and the books because they needed to be, and because the kids put everything in their mouth—the pencils. We even sprayed the sanitizer and the Terminator (cleaning machine) on the rugs because they needed to be disinfected as well.”

School was let out last Monday with more than 250 students getting sick, they returned Thursday, but students came back to school sick, again.

The school had a plan for students who returned but still showed signs of symptoms.

“I am going to have a couple of rooms, one in each building, for kids that become sick so we can try and quarantine them better because nurses’ offices are just not designed to have a lot of sick kids in them at one time,” Hendrix said. 

Washington County Health Department officials say they have not received any samples from the students to determine what kind of sickness affected the children.