Boarding schools frustrated as day students can continue but boarders must isolate

It’s one Covid close contact rule for some classmates, and entirely another for boarding students, as 23 Sacred Heart boarders are forced into seven-day isolation.

Back on the farm: Dakota Ettridge, 16, of Penong spent nearly 10 hours in the car to get back to school in Adelaide - Sacred Heart College – after the school holidays, only to be sent home three days later when a fellow boarding student tested positive to Covid. Picture: Supplied.

Dakota Ettridge’s parents had barely got home from the 20-hour round trip to drop their daughter at boarding school in Adelaide, when they had to turn around to bring her home.

Sacred Heart school principal Steve Byrne says the scenario faced by the farming family from Penong in the state’s far west, is just one example of the “untenable” rules around Covid in boarding schools.

Mr Byrne said 23 of his school’s boarding students, who come from across the state including Ceduna, Roxby Downs, Naracoorte and Vivonne Bay on Kangaroo Island, were forced into seven-day isolation on Friday under close contact rules applied in boarding schools.

Dakota Ettridge, 16, in year 11 at Sacred Heart College, was sent home from boarding school after only three nights, meaning an almost 20-round trip for her parents. Picture: Supplied

In contrast, day student classmates of positive cases can continue going to school unless they experience symptoms of the disease, as they are deemed “class contacts”.

Mr Byrne said a “workable” solution was needed to allow boarding students to stay at school, as they could in other states and territories.

“We can’t bring them back and then run the risk they get sent straight home again,” he said, adding all boarders at his school had RATs three times a week.

“Sacred Heart is one of seven Marist boarding schools – which operate in four states – in Australia and we are the only ones trying to operate under these rules.

“(It’s) throwing family life up in the air as parents have to drop everything to get here ... it is emotional and there is a financial impost on families and the school.”

Sacred Heart College principal Steve Byrne. Picture: Supplied.

Cindy Ettridge said she and husband John Polkinghorne, who have three younger children at home, got back from the school drop off at 10pm last Tuesday, a round trip of 1900km.

At 6pm on Thursday they got the phone call they’d been dreading.

“The ridiculous part is one of our girls at Ceduna (school) found out she was a class contact at the same time but that didn’t matter, she could keep going to school,” Ms Ettridge said.

While Dakota will be clear to go back to school this Friday if she tests negative, the family is undecided on what they will do.

“It’s very stressful ... all the kids in the boarding house will be tested again on Sunday and if there is another positive case, she’ll be sent home again,” she said.

Yesterday the state’s Isolated Children’s Parents’ Association (ICPA) joined Catholic Education South Australia and South Australia’s Independent schools to call for a change in how Covid rules are applied in boarding schools.

“We are advocating for boarding staff to be considered as ‘essential’ workers to avoid repeated lockdowns and closures,” president Jill Greenfield said.

“SA Health rules are leaving parents confused and, in some cases, not knowing what to do.”

But Premier Steven Marshall is standing firm: “Look, it’s very tough for boarding students but what we do know is a massive increased risk to those people that are living in those residential facilities.”

In a statement, SA Health says its advice is “based on communicable disease control best-practice, combined with our current situation in SA”.

“It will be regularly reviewed and updated as our local circumstances change,” it read.