As MFS nears the three-year mark since the coronavirus first affected the school, the 2022-2023 school year was slated to be the first that could be truly “normal” again. Unfortunately, various illnesses still found ways to affect school life and send both students and faculty home throughout the winter time, and have continued to do so following the return to school from Winter Break.
While it is difficult to determine the specific viruses that members of the MFS community have been stuck at home with, UC Davis Health predicted that a “trio of viral threats [that] includes respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza (flu) and COVID” would affect the U.S. this year. Due to the lack of testing taking place this year, however, it is not known which viruses were the most prominent at MFS.
With multiple viruses spreading around the school since November, teachers have faced weak student attendance and students have dealt with teacher absence often.
Nurse Jennifer Raue mentioned that she thinks that “students and faculty are getting more sick than in the years prior to COVID-19,” which has been exemplified by the large amount of students and faculty that have been out sick sometime this school year.
The impact that these viruses now have on the school community raises a broader question: How do we deal with regular viruses around the school in a (somewhat) post-COVID era?
Raue noted that the guidelines in place regarding sick student attendance have remained the same as they were prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic: “They’re the same rules we’ve always had … nothing has changed.” The rules, according to the Student Health & Nursing page found on myMFS, currently state that students should not attend school until they are “24 hours fever-free without taking fever-reducing medications.”
While the policies surrounding sicknesses may have remained the same, some students say that the attitude towards sick students and faculty has not. Student Ava Patel ’25 noted that there does tend to be a new stigma around students who may be sick and that she’s “noticed an attitude change with students who are near [her] because [she] had bronchitis for a while, even though it wasn’t contagious.” She explained that students seemed to be more “nervous, scared, and distant,” when around her while she had the cough and runny nose that often comes with bronchitis.
Patel, who found herself sick at home this school year “multiple times,” says that there’s no need for a policy change regarding sick students: “I feel like getting sick is a normal thing, regardless of COVID. We were getting sick before COVID and we’re getting sick after COVID. It’s a normal thing, so I feel like the implementation of new policies throughout the school is not needed,” she commented.
Adding onto Patel’s sentiments, Upper School English teacher Debra Galler commented on whether a policy change is necessary: “Not really. I think the school has been really accommodating both to teachers and students who need time [absent] and need time to make up that time later, so we don’t really need a change,” she remarked.
Galler also noted that for faculty, dealing with sicknesses can make their job harder: “It always affects us, because … we plan every day what we want to do and even one or two days [out] can really throw a wrench in everything, so it’s really frustrating. Plus, the number of students who have had to be absent has created a lot of makeup work and back and forth, so I think [the sicknesses have] been really tough on everyone.”
As viruses spread throughout MFS, Raue says that in order to stay safe, the most important things to do are “washing your hands, taking your vitamins, and staying healthy.”
