As students in Evangeline Parish head back to school, Superintendent Darwin Lazard says there is a lot of behind the scenes work going into reopening classrooms safely.
In the summer of 2020, he created a medical advisory committee. The committee is led by local doctors, Charles Aswell and Tina Stefanski.
The whole purpose is to keep students in class, in person. One of the ways they did this last year, and will continue, is by testing students at the school nurse's office at the earliest sign of symptoms.
"If its positive they were quarantined. If they were negative but still had symptoms, they were quarantined, sent to a primary provider and they could come back if everything was good. that took a lot of people who could potentially spread the virus out of our environment," says Aswell.
Lazard says it is vital to his students' education that they be healthy so they can be in class.
"State superintendent released some information that showed that statewide, students who participated in in person learning outperformed students who participated in virtual instruction by about 15 points," says Lazard.