SHELBY COUNTY, Tennessee —
Despite no recommendation from the Shelby County Health Department over concerns from the coronavirus, Shelby County Schools decided to extend their Spring Break another week.
One Shelby County School parent described what his/her child experienced, Monday, in a letter to a school board member. That parent described broken soap dispensers, inoperable faucets, feces on toilets, and children having to "wipe with notebook paper."
"They run out of this. They don't have soap or tissue in the restrooms," said parent Angela Stovall.
Just Monday, in a press conference addressing the coronavirus, the head of the schools' custodial teams, Gernard Phillips, said, "We're making sure that we're stocked in all of our restrooms that includes hand sanitizers, bacterial soap and of course paper towels and paper products," said Phillips.
Stovall used to work for the Shelby County Schools' janitorial staff.
"We didn't even have stuff to restock the things that they needed a lot of time because we had to wait on the truck or wait on someone to bring it to us or to have it or whatever the excuse or reason was" said Stovall.
Shelby County School Board member, Michelle McKissack said, "As a parent myself, I have three children in Shelby County Schools, so of course cleanliness is top of the hat for me. As far as those shortcomings that are within our schools, we're glad to know. As you know, SCS is a behemoth of an organization and you don't know about what's happening in every single one of your schools, but we have hired cleaning crew and cleaning staff to take care of this. If they aren't doing their jobs, we'll address that for sure."
McKissack continued, "This is something that we've been monitoring and are continuing to monitor. You can't say exactly what's going to happen with all of this, but it's certainly where the board can say, 'Hmm. Let's take a look at these contracts.'"
When the decision came down to extend spring break another week due to COVID-19, many parents felt they were finally heard.
"I think it's a great idea. I think they should have been started for the precaution of the kids and other people to stop a lot of things going on including outings, clubs a lot of places publicly," said Stovall.
"During spring break, we'll also take that time to have some uninterrupted time to do some thorough cleaning throughout our buildings," said Phillips.
That was the commitment made Monday.
"Working on areas through extra sanitation of door handles, door knobs, those general areas like cafeterias and auditoriums," said Phillips.
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"It just became evident that at the very minimum, we would need one more week beyond spring break to take care of cleaning 200 plus schools," said McKissack.
What about students who depend on schools for meals?
"They are working to see about making sure those children have meals to eat while they have that additional week," said McKissack.
What about pay?
"Then we have an allotment of snow days. That's where this pull of extra days where we can pull from is from the snow days that we didn't have this year," said McKissack. "Everyone who works for SCS will be compensated for that week that they will not be in school."
Spring break for Shelby County Schools begins March 13, and classes resume March 30.