After doctors' reports, entomologist visits, specialized dogs sniffing for bedbugs and a thorough cleaning and disinfection of Clifford Elementary School, district officials still cannot identify the cause of what sent home dozens of kindergartners a week ago with a rash that highly resembled multiple bug bites.
Last Wednesday on Sept. 14, school officials called the district with reports of eight children with bug bites, and the number escalated to 30-35 the following day, according to district spokeswoman Naomi Hunter.
"It looked like my son rolled around in a flea's nest," said kindergarten parent Niki Kolokithas of the dozens of bites that covered her son's torso and arms.
© Redwood City School District Students met with "Curly" the bedbug sniffing dog and learned how he performed his duties.
After the call to the district Wednesday, Diaz followed the district protocol for flea infestation, based on the rashes' similar appearance to flea bites. Diaz completed a thorough inspection of the classrooms based on the state's Integrated Pest Management protocol, yet did not find a bug infestation. Loose clothing was bagged up for 48 hours, rooms were vacuumed three times with a filter bag change each time. All hard surfaces were disinfected and restrooms were cleaned and disinfected.
"The top priority is the health and safety of our students," Hunter said. "We acted aggressively beyond protocol, and we're going to continue communicating about this."
On Thursday, the district contacted the county health department who instructed the school to contact parents and send their children home for a doctor's visit.
However, some parents have been dissatisfied with the communication.
"It's been frustrating," Kolokithas said. "The information hasn't been very clear or concise."
However, she said that Principal Phil Lind "has been great" and will provide information when he can through newsletters, announcements on the PTO website, and parents' phone calls.
Automated calls were sent from the principal last Thursday letting parents know of all the procedures being done to combat the problem.
That same afternoon, principal Phil Lind received phone calls from parents saying the bites were not chicken pox, but still unidentifiable.
The school placed monitoring boards with glue traps to "collect as much stuff as possible" to ship to labs for examination, Diaz said. The carpet was removed and will be replaced in the four kindergarten and after school classrooms. Samples from carpet and fibar, the padding on the playground area, were removed and sent to a lab for analysis. Results from the tests will be available at the beginning next week, he estimated.
© Redwood City School DistrictClothes and several items were boxed up and quarantined.
On Friday, all furniture was disinfected, and students were transported to new classrooms on the other side of campus.
"There was no clear diagnosis of what it was, but you pretty much evacuate before you find out what it is," Diaz said."
Fences still cordon off the playgrounds and the kindergarten rooms are closed until definitive answers are drawn. The district hired two private contractors to investigate this matter and even brought in an entomologist from the University of California Davis. "Curly" the bedbug-sniffing dog from the company Scenttek in Millbrae roamed the school, and a district arborist checked the trees and landscapes.
Nothing has turned up answers.
Kolokithas has offered some of her own theories for this mysterious rash, but has no specific evidence.
She said the wood chips have often been an attractive place for wild animals to defecate in, and often removed by volunteer teacher efforts. She added that RAC, or rubberized asphalt concrete, would be a much cleaner alternative made of a material that discourages animals from poking around the area.
The business next door had also been removing ivy and some juniper bushes at the time, sending pollen into the air and possibly disrupting some colonies living in there, Kolokithas said.
But regardless of the cause, Kolokithas said that she hopes a very rigid policy is followed in the event that a more dangerous pandemic should affect the entire school.
Attendance has returned to normal, with 82 of 88 kindergarteners in school on Monday, according to Hunter.
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