How Mansfield schools will soon be helping area health-care workers fight coronavirus
The phone calls kept coming to the Mansfield Independent School District four weeks ago even though everyone knew its schools were closed indefinitely.
Area health-care workers, hospitals and first-responders were seeking medical equipment, and knew items that could help in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic were sitting unused in nurse’s offices throughout the MISD campuses.
Coincidentally, district officials and their medical team had been considering if donating taxpayer-bought supplies and personal protective equipment was possible.
It is, and on Tuesday morning the Mansfield school board approved the donations of needed supplies.
“We had some of our local health-care facilities and individuals reach out to us when they were having so much difficulty getting equipment, PPE specifically,” said Cathy Marsh, MISD’s Director of Health Services. “I pitched to my boss, David Wright, ‘Is this something we could do?’ And we started moving forward from there.”
The district needs to make only a few decisions on logistics before beginning to distribute items where they are needed most. Marsh said that Mansfield, Arlington and Grand Prairie — the three primary cities served by MISD schools — will likely be highest on the priority list.
But the goal is to help as many communities as possible while supplies last. MISD has an impressive bounty to hand out, including approximately 500 N95 facemasks.
There are also roughly 800 surgical masks, 500 loop masks, 400 pediatric masks, 150 surgical gowns and 150 boxes of latex gloves, with between 100 to 300 gloves per box.
Marsh didn’t leave the Mansfield cupboards bare, but she guessed that 85 percent of the district’s medical supplies were gathered for donation by 43 campus nurses. “It’s a significant amount,” she said. “For the most part, this is the greater portion of it.”
Mansfield isn’t the only Tarrant County district to donate medical supplies, but it’s the largest to do so. The Grapevine-Colleyville ISD and the Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD shipped out equipment roughly two weeks ago.
Ultimately, the decision came down to good people wanting to do the right thing. Marsh has a hunch that donations of useful items, like disinfecting wipes and hand sanitizer, could be coming next.
“We just started looking at this because of all or our staff members’ goodwill,” Marsh said. “It’s people wanting to help and willing to do things.”
