Schools across the country have made a few minor changes in response to the entry of the Ebola virus into the US earlier this year.
Ebola fears contributed, at least in part, to the cancellation of a field trip from schools Washington state to Madagascar. They caused a Connecticut third grader who had attended a family wedding in Nigeria to be kept out of school for 21 days.
Although Ebola is limited to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, according to the World Health Organization, the death of Thomas Eric Duncan, who returned to Texas from Liberia and died from the virus, has elevated the level of fear in the US. The virus is transmitted from one person to another mainly through body fluids.
The father of the Connecticut third grader who was banned from school, in his lawsuit, shows that the WHO had certified Nigeria as being free of Ebola, according to an Oct 20 report.
“What the city of Milford and Milford school officials did to this young girl was outrageous,” the New Haven Register quoted the family’s attorney as saying. “Rather than defend her against the rumors and misinformation about where she traveled and whether she had symptoms of Ebola, they chose to take the easy way out and prevent her from going to school. It’s the essence of discrimination.”
For the record, the third grader never showed any signs of symptoms of an Ebola infection, and she is not infected with the virus.
About the cancellation of the trip to Madagascar, students from the School of the Arts and the Science and Math Institute in Tacoma, Wash., were disappointed.
“They told us the trip was being canceled because of Ebola,” one high school junior was quoted as saying. The trip was scheduled to take place in January, during the schools’ one-month inter-semester term. “They said there were other reasons, but they never specified.”
Students at the schools had apparently put a lot of work into the plans.
“The students worked hard over these past many months to raise money for the trip, have studied in preparation for (it), and had really been looking forward to what promised to be a once-in-a-lifetime educational experience for them,” a parent was quoted as saying.
According to the school district, the possibility of unrest in Madagascar also helped officials make the decision to cancel the field trip. A coup took place in 2009, and despite that being five years ago, some school officials cited that as an additional reason for cancelling the trip.
Why was your favorite field trip special? Read our story about a teacher who took his students to a pawnshop and see Common Core writing standard W.11-12.3 for more information.
