Northern Lehigh School District continues to use a COVID-19 grant to purchase personal protective equipment gear.

Assistant Superintendent Dr. Tania Stoker noted at last Monday’s school board meeting that the district received $182,692 for its PCCD COVID-19 grant, which it’s been using to purchase PPE gear for the district.

“That includes things like cleaning and disinfectant products, pump sprayers, temperature scanners, gloves, masks, eye wear, face shields,” Stoker said. “We’ve purchased quite a bit of Plexiglas to separate any areas that have high traffic flow.”

Stoker then discussed what items would be used for the cafeterias.

“In our cafeterias, we are slated to purchase carts and warming and cooling devices for the delivery of lunches if we need to do that in the classrooms, or if we’re able to do that in our cafeteria no longer using trays, but being able to wrap items individually to keep conscious of less people handling food,” she said.

Stoker said the grant has also gone toward various hand sanitization stations.

“We also have hand sanitization stations that have been purchased; they’ve been spread around the district,” adding that she believes they have about 100 of them within all of the district’s buildings. “And those are electronic, so you can just put your hands underneath, and as students or faculty members walk into the district, they can use those to sanitize their hands.”

Stoker said the grant has also been used for social distancing materials.

“We have stickers for social distancing that we put a Northern Lehigh tag onto, so we have those for our hallways, we have traffic flow arrows and other demarcation of how flow will be in our buildings, as well as spacing of students and people as they walk through the buildings,” she said. “We also have developed our plan, have cards and bookmarks, and those pieces of paper that go out to families so that they’re aware of what our plan entails.”

Stoker said the district has also purchased water through the grant.

“We’re expecting that students will bring water bottles,” she said. “But in order to not be using the water fountains that we have in the buildings, we purchased additional water for both our athletes (and staff), and then if anybody in the building needs water throughout the school day as well.”

Stoker said those are among some of the things the district has purchased through the grant.

“The PCCD COVID grant which we’re using for PPE gear needs to be expended by October, so we’re trying to purchase as much as we can and get that expended,” she said. “Some of the things are on back order and a little bit delayed because at this point everyone’s trying to get their PPE gear, but I think that our administrative team is doing a really good job of sourcing those materials and getting them into the district as soon as they can.”