CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – Jennifer Owen has a son in second grade at a Clarksville-Montgomery County school. Last Wednesday, her son’s teacher wrote to tell her that her son, along with eight other students in the classroom, had a sore throat and needed to be picked up.

The teacher added that Owen’s student could return the next day if he felt better, but the next morning, he still felt unwell. She took him to the doctor’s office and waited about three hours to be seen because of high volumes in the pediatric waiting room.

Owen said her son was tested for COVID-19, and while she was relieved it came back negative, she was alarmed to hear from the doctor that the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System and Montgomery County Health Department were no longer doing contact tracing for COVID-19 in school buildings.

“What is the benefit on their side? Because at this point, I feel the most dangerous place my kid can go to is the school, because that’s the place he’s going to get sick, especially if nobody’s going to tell me,” Owen said.

This is the case for many families who are being left in the dark about COVID-19 exposure at the schools. Conflicting messages about how the state is doing contact tracing has left parents and district administrators alike with deep concerns.

State takes over from local schools

Due to a state-mandated change in policies this school year, CMCSS is no longer doing contact tracing. Only the Tennessee Department of Health can do that.

Last school year, the Montgomery County Health Department conducted contact tracing for the district. Here’s how it worked:

  • MCHD would receive verified, positive test results for students or teachers and notify CMCSS.
  • MCHD would handle contact tracing and ask CMCSS to assist.
  • CMCSS would view class rosters and help MCHD identify close contacts.
  • CMCSS would send out notifications to families whose students were affected.

All of this is what the Tennessee Department of Health claims it is doing this year.

In a statement to Clarksville Now, Bill Christian, associate director of TDH’s office of communications and media relations, said TDH is conducting contact tracing with the help of a third party contractor.

“The Tennessee Department of Health conducts COVID contact tracing in schools throughout the state. The outreach is conducted by TDH employees as well as with the support of contract employees through Xtend,” Christian said.

“When cases are identified in students or staff, schools are expected to supply a list of identified close contacts, seating charts, and rosters to the extent those documents are maintained (for bus, classroom, lunchroom or athletics settings, as applicable). The health department and schools cooperate to ensure that contacts are notified via phone and text messages,” he said.

But this is not happening in Clarksville-Montgomery County. Instead, Owen said concerned parents are using Facebook groups to let other families know which schools and classrooms had COVID-19 cases.

“I would hope that somebody would let me know, with any health concern that would come up and not just COVID, but also lice or anything, where if it’s something contagious was spreading especially since the numbers are so high among school kids,” Owen said.

Local schools haven’t heard from state

“It is a constantly changing and confusing situation at the state level of guidance,” Anthony Johnson, chief communications officer at CMCSS, told Clarksville Now.

When informed that TDH claimed it is conducting contact tracing for the school system, Johnson said this was not the case.

“I called our safety and health department to confirm that the Tennessee Department of Health has not reached out to the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System, or any schools, to ask for their support in contact tracing, and they said no,” Johnson told Clarksville Now.

In fact, Johnson said the district contacted TDH last Friday to get more information on contact tracing and to ask how they could best support the state in the process, but neither TDH nor Xtend has reached out to ask for this information.

Johnson also said they’re not being informed of how many positive cases are in the schools, and without receiving positive case verification from TDH, CMCSS can’t suggest quarantines or isolation for individuals.

That has left the district relying on data from self-reported cases, and there’s no guarantee that data is correct.

“We had that verification from MCHD (last year), we coordinated with them, we had two-way communication we were able to support, but that doesn’t exist this year, at least at this point,” Johnson said.

In response to CMCSS’ claim that TDH is not contact tracing, Bill Christian of TDH told Clarksville Now Friday morning that there is strain on both health departments and school systems.

“When a school is able to provide those details such as seating charts or close contacts in a classroom that certainly does help TDH and our partners with contact tracing.  When that information is not available, TDH works to identify close contacts through phone calls and case interviews,” Christian said.

What’s next: Possible school closures

In TDH’s initial statement to Clarksville Now, the state seems to shift blame to local school systems for not providing close contact information: “If contact information is not available to the health department, that may result in delayed outreach to the affected student or caregiver,” the statement said.

But the state isn’t giving CMCSS information about positive student cases in the first place.

This has left CMCSS with little to no options on how to mitigate COVID-19 spread in school buildings. Currently, over 10% of CMCSS’s student body is out on COVID absences, according to the district’s new COVID-19 dashboard.

In addition, there are 171 CMCSS employees on COVID-related leave. While Johnson said this number is drastically lower than last year, it’s left the district scrambling to get enough substitute teachers to cover the absences.

Johnson said there’s now a list of emergency substitute teachers on call who are stepping in. This includes about 50 administrative chiefs and supervisors who have volunteered a few days a week to help meet the demand.

Should the staffing demand become too great, CMCSS has few options left except to close schools. That’s already happened for weeklong periods in several districts, including Wilson, Union and Coffee counties.