Three Arizona teachers who shared a classroom got coronavirus. One of them died. (CNN)

[Mike 03]

CNN
Jennifer Henderson
Updated 11:31 AM EDT, Sun July 12, 2020

Three teachers who shared a summer classroom at a school in Arizona all contracted coronavirus last month, leaving one of them dead.

Kimberley Chavez Lopez Byrd, 61, died June 26, less than two weeks after she was hospitalized. The other two teachers -- Jena Martinez and Angela Skillings -- said they're still struggling with the effects of the virus that has killed nearly 135,000 people nationwide.

All three teachers wore masks and gloves, used hand sanitizer and socially distanced, but still got sick, according to school officials at the small community in the eastern part of the state.

Kimberley Byrd had worked at the Hayden Winkelman School District for 38 years -- so long that she'd started teaching the children of her former students.

"Losing Mrs. Byrd in our small rural community was devastating. She was an excellent educator with a huge heart," said Pamela Gonzalez, principal of Leonor Hambly K8. "We find comfort in knowing her story may bring awareness to the importance of keeping our school employees safe and our precious students safe in this pandemic."

Read more: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/07/12/us/arizona-teachers-coronavirus/index.html

[LisaL]

1. That's the thing.

While most young healthy teenagers will have only mild symptoms (and there are exceptions to everything, so most, not all), you can't say the same about their teachers.
I lot of teachers don't belong to a group of young healthy adults, they might be older, they have pre-existing conditions.
So who is going to teach all these asymptomatic teenagers?

[Tommymac]

15. And get paid peanuts for risking their lives.

It's time to pay essential workers a living wage at the very least...and teachers especially need to be paid according to the service they provide - they should be getting at least mid level IT worker pay rates to start.

Instead the tRump Crime Family gives out billions to it's cronies.

Go Joe.

[Nevilledog]

2. Yikes! Our school district did distance learning for summer school.

Never been to Hayden, but I think it's quite small. They probably figured they'd be okay. How sad.

[LisaL]

4. Even though teachers took precautions, they still got infected.

I am assuming they were homemade masks. There is only so much homemade masks can do. You have to also eat or drink and you can't do it in a mask. And perfectly healthy appearing students could be carriers.

[Nevilledog]

5. It's an unwinnable situation.

Kids are hurt not being in school, kids and adults are at risk being in school. The problem is almost paralyzing in its complexity and ramifications.

[mucifer]

7. Yes and it wouldn't be if our country as a whole shut down early and wore masks It's so

insanely horrible.

[Nevilledog]

9. I know. And I'm so angry about it.

It's like the worst ever case of "I told ya so", when you never wanted to be right.

[AlexSFCA]

14. it was 100% avoidable

[soothsayer]

6. I guess you'd need a medical grade mask

Otherwise forget it.

[mucifer]

8. and actually a face shield because you can get it in your eyes

[soothsayer]

10. Yes. Wore mine about an hour ago

[BGBD]

33. Even good masks

are going to be of limited benefit when you have prolonged exposure.

A mask is meant for you to go to the store and walk around for half an hour if you need to, not sit in a room with an infected person for 9 hours a day 5 days a week. At some point it is going to find a way in.

[LeftInTX]

22. This was distance learning

Teachers were using the classroom to record lessons.

[Nevilledog]

23. That's just too sad. Makes opening schools even scarier for everyone.

Teachers and students are used to sharing space and things.

[drray23]

3. This is tragic and a preview of things to come

if school districts start reopening in the middle of the pandemic.
I assume that a summer school program is small scale compared to the full class load of a normal school semester and still the teachers got infected.
Its going to be a carnage if we reopen full scale.

[Politicub]

11. One of the earliest infections in Atlanta was a teacher.

The school where she taught was closed down temporarily, at first. This was a few weeks before the state closed all of the schools.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

12. DeVos thinks it is worth the cost. She hates public school teachers because ... public schools. . nt

[AwakeAtLast]

13. We are contemplating our wills and advanced directives

This was the topic of conversation for many of my Facebook teacher friends this weekend.

[Iggo]

16. Has it been some super hush-hush top-secret secret...

...that you can't avoid getting sick if you work at a school every day with children?

Or are people just conveniently forgetting it, and then acting all surprised when it happens, just so they can open up the schools?

I think the answers are No and Yes.

[DSandra]

17. Workers are seen as disposable by much of society

Labor rights had to be fought very hard for in this country to be enacted. Without, just remember why life expectancy got down to the 30’s at one point. We have to stand up for our own health, society surely won’t otherwise care.

[IronLionZion]

25. You think anyone in this administration or GOP gives 2 shits about teachers?

They've been relentlessly attacking education for years and cutting budgets wherever they can. They don't value teachers or education or even the right of students to not be shot in their classrooms. They don't care if students spread the virus to elderly or vulnerable teachers.

[Iggo]

26. I think rich white Americans don't care about non-whites and poor whites.

What I'm talking about is people on the street ignoring what they know to be true, that classrooms are and always have been petri dishes for whatever's going around.

[Blue_true]

29. I live around a lot of poor Whites. Most of those people are leading the charge to

open things completely up and ignore any safeguard. It wasn’t upper class Whites that were menacing politicians with nooses and assault weapons a couple months back.

[cayugafalls]

18. That's the problem. Time + Exposure equals Viral Load.

In a closed room with lots of people breathing and talking for long periods of time, the viral load in the air of aerosolized particles will be greater regardless of what you do. That is why hospitals have negative pressure rooms to keep the particles from seeping out the doors, they are vented to the outside to create the pressure.

Masks, gloves, sanitizer will help, but, just like this article states, I just can't see a scenario where this is a good idea. It did not help at all.

This is so going to backfire on our society. Trump and Devos will be responsible for even more death and carnage.

I hope school districts will fight back.

[LeftInTX]

21. No children were present here. This was a virtual classroom setup.

Which makes it even worse.

[cayugafalls]

27. I agree, the air escaping from the sides of masks and prolonged exposure was horrible.

Aerosolized droplets can hang in the air for longer than originally thought and most likely infiltrated their eyes.

I noticed down below you wrote that one teacher was a ballet instructor? I did not see that in the article.

Perhaps, the exertion or perhaps there was something else going on in the class before they entered it.

Regardless, this is a terrible thing to happen.

I am in no way minimizing the story, this was a horrible loss of a great teacher and now our kids and teachers are being thrown together to play out this horrid dream of virus go round.

Another criminal act by this administration.

[LeftInTX]

28. Ballet folkorico - Mexican folk dance

Summer enrichment class...

Very popular in the southwest

[Blue_true]

30. Someone at the school was sick.

Masks are good only for comparatively short exposures to a virus, like a couple hours or less. If someone is sick in a mask and everyone stays in the same air for hours, other people will take in virus, even when wearing a mask. The only way to avoid that is have people wear a self-contained breathing system, but then they can’t do things like talk to other people and cameras.

[LisaL]

31. And where are we going to get those self-containing breathing systems?

To this day general public is told to wear cloth masks. Clearly wearing N95 would be better, but we don't have enough of them. So we are told to wear cloth masks, including bandanas and so on.
Cloth masks will vary greatly by what they filter. They also allow air to leak around the mask.

[Blue_true]

32. Two ply cotton masks are fairly easy to procure.

If everyone is wearing a mask, even a 1 ply cotton mask with tight weave would most likely keep people healthy. The issue is in many places, maybe 50% of the people at best are wearing masks when in close contact with other people.

You are right, self-contained breathing systems are not common and most regular people would have no clue on how to use them. Also, Trump can’t manage the manufacture of testing swabs, there in no way that he manages something as complicated as self contained breathing air systems.

[Sloumeau]

19. The Hayden-Winkleman School District is about 90 minutes north of me here in Tucson, AZ

Right now about 1 in 4 people in Arizona are testing positive for the Coronavirus. If we send all our kids back to school in the fall, like Trump wants, the virus will rip through the rest of the population.

[LeftInTX]

20. There were no children present here

This was done in a classroom that was being used as a "studio" for virtual learning.

I believe Ms. Byrd was teaching ballet folklorico, which is hard to film from home.

[niyad]

24. And we are supposed to reopen the schools..? Cruella and co. Are murderers,

as far as I am concerned.