Oxford school officials received “verbal confirmation” Friday that a student attending the Crossroads for Youth School at 930 E. Drahner Rd. was infected with Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
“A student (an 11th grade female) went home (sick) Wednesday afternoon,” said Assistant Superintendent Nancy Kammer, who noted that the Oakland County Health Division was immediately contacted Friday. “It does not sound like it is a serious situation.”
“Everything is under control,” noted Kammer on Monday. “There are no other signs of illness (in anyone else).”
MRSA is a type of staph bacteria that causes skin infections that can’t be treated with certain antibiotics. It’s sometimes mistaken for a spider bite.
Symptoms range from minor to serious, including skin redness and swelling, pimple-like red bumps, boils, rash, fever, headache, and malaise.
Infections can spread quickly to other parts of the body or to other people.
MRSA usually spreads from person to person through hands or close, skin-to-skin contact. It can live on the skin and survive on some surfaces for prolonged periods of time.
Kammer said the student’s parent and doctor gave school officials “verbal confirmation” Friday that it was a case of MRSA.
According to Dr. Janet McPeek, president of Crossroads for Youth, the MRSA infection was located on the back of one of the female student’s legs.
“We require the kids to wear long pants,” she said. “She was wearing long pants and so from a health department perspective, they did not see it as a highly contagious situation because of the location of where the infection was.”
The infected student has been out of school since Oct. 31 and had still not returned to classes as of Tuesday.
“We don’t have any anticipated (date of ) return, although it sounds like things are under control as far as her health,” Kammer said.
When the Oakland County Health Division was contacted about the situation on Friday “they recommended that we continue with school,” Kammer said.
“They did not see any major risk,” McPeek said.
McPeek said it was Crossroads’ Director of Operations, Tom Carter, who contacted the Health Division and “confirmed what precautions we needed to take and specifically what (cleaning) chemicals we should use.”
A thorough cleaning of the school building was conducted over the weekend.
Kammer said cleaning crews employed by both the school district and Crossroads for Youth were used.
“We kind of did a double cleaning there,” Kammer said.
Also thoroughly cleaned were the school buses used by Crossroads students and the Learning Center building across from the school. It’s where day students are dropped off in the morning and participate in after-school activities.
“Any contact surfaces, the bathroom, all the offices, the desks, the chairs, everything in that building got it,” Carter said. “The buses that she rides on were cleaned from top to bottom with this disinfectant (the county) recommended.”
Carter said “we went overboard” with the cleaning in order to make everyone “feel at ease and comfortable.”
The county’s Health Division “confirmed that the precautions that we were taking were going above and beyond,” according to McPeek. “We exceeded their recommendations.”
“Tom (Carter) also provided spray bottles of disinfectant in the classrooms for all of the teachers and in the programs should anybody feel more comfortable continuing to spray contact surfaces,” McPeek noted.
There are about 85 students who attend the Crossroads for Youth School.
“It’s mostly (grades) nine through 12,” Kammer said. “There are a few seventh and eighth-grade students.”
Most students who attend classes there live on campus. Only a handful are there just for the day during the week.
The infected student was one of those few day students.