Faith Lutheran has recently stopped conducting some of the Covid-19 prevention procedures that have been in place this past year. Many people are surprised by this.  However, this decision was well thought out by the administration. 

During the first few months of the school year, there were no covid cases and, therefore, staff stopped taking students’ temperatures. The administration sent out a survey to parents and they indicated they wanted the school to start taking temperatures again.

“Since January 4th we’ve taken well over 100,000 here and not one single kid has had an elevated temperature that we have had to send home.” said Dr. Steve Buuck, Faith’s CEO. 

This is great news but makes you wonder whether it was even necessary in the first place. For instance, why did we wipe desks down after every use, but now were aren’t. 

“The CDC, about a month ago, said that Covid is not spreading on hard services.” said Buuck.  “If there has been a sick person in a highly touched area it should be cleaned once a day,” he explained.  “There has been some science and data that we now have that we didn’t have in August.” That information has led to the recent decision to stop some of the procedures that are no longer necessary including cleaning hard surfaces 5 times a day.

Staying home if showing any sort of symptoms is one of the more important precautions that should continue.  It has been a great help that when kids are sick, they stay home. “In Covid, people have been more aware and self-assessing that they keep their kids home when they’re sick”, said Buuck. Before the pandemic, 7 in 10 parents sent their kids to school even when sick. “This past year has made students and parents more cautious and attentive.”

“It is criminal that schools do not have kids back” Dr. Buuck said,  “I wanted to get back, I wanted you guys back, I knew you wanted to be back, and your families wanted you to come back”.At the beginning of the year Buuck reached out to two of his friends. One of his friends runs a school in Shanghai, China and the other, in Queensland, Australia. They both opened their schools back up on June 1. “Every week I was asking them, what are you doing to keep the kids safe? And, is it working?”, said Buuck. We incorporated what they were doing into our routines.

We most likely won’t be going back to 100 percent on campus this year even though Las Vegas is opening up, but we are waiting to hear whether we can open up enough to have closing assembly, end of the year award nights, and other end of the year traditions all together.

Dr. Buuck states that “the mask mandate isn’t going anywhere” but added that he is “really hopeful that on May 1, they’re gonna give us the power, the right, and the privilege to make our own decisions on different things.”  We hope that we can take away social distancing in schools and keep masks. 

Dr. Steve Buuck said he is proud that we made history by being the only “live entertainment in the state of Nevada in the fall” with the very well-known entertainment phenomenon “The Strip” not being too far.

“I don’t think we have done things perfectly but I am very proud of how we pulled it off”, said Buuck.