Monrovia School Undergoes Deep Cleaning After Parent's Possible Exposure To Coronavirus Patient

MONROVIA (CBSLA) — A school in Monrovia underwent a deep cleaning overnight after a parent of two students came into contact with someone with coronavirus.

Clifton Middle School in Monrovia will reopen Thursday as usual after being scrubbed down and disinfected.

"This campus is fine," said Rob Hammond, the president of Monrovia Unified's school board. "That's why I'm here this morning, that's why all the teachers are here this morning.

The deep cleaning by a cleaning crew that normally works at hospitals was ordered because a parent with two students at the school and works in the health care industry may have come into contact with someone with coronavirus. The parent and the two students have quarantined themselves at home, but they are not sick and are not showing symptoms.

The Monrovia Unified School District consulted with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health officials and learned that people who are not symptomatic are not contagious. But out of an abundance of caution, the district still decided to hire the cleaning crew.

Classes at the school resumed as usual. But students like Emily Melgar had to push past her mother's misgivings about going to school.

"She told me not to come to school and all that," she said. "I said I can do it because I have something important today for my class."

Cameron Allen said she tried to send her grandson to school with a face mask but the principal took it away.

"They say it causes a panic, that the other kids get really nervous about it," she said.

Clifton Middle School is the first school in Los Angeles County to deal with such a situation, so officials are still working out how to respond at campuses.

"It should be a decision made by us, for the safety of us," Allen said.