Millions for Tech Toys, None for Public Health

As the swine flu spreads across Montgomery County, with Rockville High School closed this morning, and children at Einstein High School, and Takoma Park and Westland middle schools at risk, it appears you as a taxpayer have decided to spend millions and millions of dollars on tech toys like Promethean Boards, wigen gadgets and more, yet have made the decision to spend zero on Public Health.

A quick survey indicates MCPS and your elected Board of Education have no plan to swab the schools, or offer even a minimal plan to control the spread of this flu. At the same time the World Health Organization on April 29 raised the level to a Phase 5 pandemic. According to the CDC website,

A Phase 5 alert is a “strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalize the organization, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short.”

From what I can tell, teachers are not even being told to remind their students to wash hands frequently, and cough or sneeze into a tissue. While free reminder posters are available from CDC, where are they in the schools?

The County and your elected Board of Education has had at least two years to prepare for this event. Not even the simplest measures were or are being taken.

If there is a Public Health plan for the public schools, I sure would like to see it.

For those of you with no soap in the bathrooms, as I understand may be true in some schools in the county, boy, are you out of luck.