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 "I wanted to keep my boys home but they told me the school is
safe. But if I hear of one child sneezing, those boys are staying
home," said Dawson, who lives a stone's throw from the spot where
the infected man was rushed to a hospital.
At ground zero of the U.S. Ebola scare, many parents have faced the
question of whether to pull their children out of neighborhood
schools, which officials have reassured them are safe.
"This is a deadly disease. It's just crazy," Dawson said.
In U.S. cities with large populations of immigrants from West
Africa, where the largest outbreak of Ebola on record has killed
more than 3,400 people, school boards are trying to tamp down any
panic about Ebola.
At Sam Tasby Middle School, in the same Dallas neighborhood where
the Ebola patient stayed briefly, a message was posted on a sign
outside the school on Friday: "Children First. Our School is Safe."
But while Dallas has mostly kept its cool over the Ebola case,
attendance has dropped at the four schools that were attended by the
children who had direct contact with the infected man, Liberian
national Thomas Eric Duncan. Those children have been removed from
school for monitoring.
Attendance was 10 percent lower from normal levels, early figures
from the Dallas Independent School District show.
The school board has equipped maintenance workers with protective
gear and had them scrubbing schools, deployed nurses and set up a
hotline so parents can call for updates.
It also sent a notice in English, Arabic, Nepali, Burmese and
Vietnamese to parents and guardians in the patient's melting pot
neighborhood of Vickery Meadow, saying there is no imminent danger
to children.
"As more information gets out, people calm down a little bit," said
Mike Miles, the Dallas Independent School District superintendent.
In other parts of the country that also have sizable populations of
Liberian immigrants, officials and residents have reacted to the
Ebola outbreak.
In Rhode Island, state public health officials have been briefing
school nurses since the academic year began on how to screen
patients for Ebola.
About 200 miles south in New York City, in a neighborhood on Staten
Island known as Little Liberia for its large population of
immigrants from Liberia other West African nations, many were
fearful.
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Nicole Martinez, 23, said employees of her daycare center have taken
to wearing latex hospital gloves when in contact with children.
"We've taken this precaution because we have children with families
in the parts of Africa with Ebola," she said.
At an elementary school in the same New York neighborhood, one
parent said his children were told to limit physical contact with
other students.
"Don't shake hands, don't wrestle with friends like you used to,"
said Ibraheem Fallay, 40, a Liberian-American, as he waited on the
school's stairs for his eldest daughter, Bintou.
Concerns about Ebola were not limited to primary schools.
At Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut, two graduate
epidemiology students who had traveled to Liberia to advise the
Health Ministry on using computers to track the virus will spend 21
days in isolation before returning to classes, Paul Cleary, dean of
the Yale School of Public Health, said in a letter to faculty and
staff.
Back in Dallas, Larry Lewis said he is not living in fear and has
sent his 10-year-old daughter to school to be with her friends and
teachers.
"Even if there is an epidemic of Biblical proportions lurking out
there, we have to keep on living," he said.
(Additional reporting by Marice Richter and Lisa Maria Garza in
Dallas, Sebastien Malo in New York; Richard Weizel in New Haven,
Connecticut; and Scott Malone in Boston; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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