Sturgeon R-V school district uses new temperature scanners for better results
STURGEON, Mo. (KMIZ)
Sturgeon R-V school district continues to adjust its COVID-19 precautions by purchasing new temperature scanners to better ensure the safety of students and staff.
After experiencing some issues this summer, Geoffrey Neill Sturgeon R-V Superintendent said the district found that the temporal scanners that are placed at students and staff's forehead gave inaccurate readings during activities and caused issues with creating lines at building entrances.
Neill said the district felt it was important to fix the non-consistent temperature checks after repeatedly seeing student’s temperatures extremely low around 91 and 92 degrees after getting to school when the air conditioning had been blowing in their face.
The district also experienced the scanners not able to read temperatures after students participated in outdoor activities.
Since September 9th the district switched to Fusion Technologies, where the scanner measures the staff and student’s body temperature on their wrist.
Neill said these scanners have shown more consistent results and also reduced the lines outside of buildings to better adhere to social distancing measures.
“It doesn't get those huge fluctuation points on school buses at 90 degrees,” said Neill. “Or if they've been in the front seat of a car with the air on full blast. And so we've... been able to mitigate that a little bit.”
Neill said now if someone was showing a high temperature, they know that administrators need to set them aside and look into it again.
The district also plans to use the temperature scanners for fall and winter activities like basketball games when spectators are allowed inside the buildings.
“This would be an easy way for us to scan our spectators as they came in,” Neill said. “And not... to the point that we're holding a scanner to their forehead. They can walk by, put their wrist within a couple of inches and it gives us an all clear, it lets us know that there's... no temperature.”
Neill said this is just one of the district's layers of protections.
Laura Lawson, Sturgeon parent, said she hasn't questioned sending her kids back to school because of all the precautions the district has set.
“There were no cases in summer school and so that made me feel a little better going into the school year,” Lawson said. “And then I knew that masks were strongly recommended in the hallways and stuff like that so no, I'm not really concerned about it at all.”
Neill said he has reached out to the Boone County Commission to see if they qualify for CARES Act funding after purchasing the new temperature scanners, but are currently in the application process.
He said if the Commission does not approve that, then the district would probably still look at funding that with their own CARES Act funding.
