Bed bug letter triggers confusion in East Cleveland

EAST CLEVELAND, Ohio - When members of the Cuyahoga County Board of Health recently met with staff of the East Cleveland School District to educate them on how to proactively deal with bed bugs they left a couple of form letters as a guide to assist the district on what to tell parents if a problem arose.

On Tuesday, the wrong letter went out.

After being alerted by a parent to a problem with bed bugs in their apartment, the district decided to take action.

"The district took precautionary measures in terms of notifying parents," said East Cleveland Schools Superintendent Myrna Loy Corley.

But instead of a letter alerting parents to a problem in the child's home, the letter read in bold print "this letter has been sent to you in response to a bed bug being found in your child's classroom." It was sent home with some students at Shaw High School and one of the elementary schools in the district.

"They thought they were helping by sending the document home," said Rick Novickis Enviormental Health Supervisor for the Cuyahoga County Department of Health. "It kind of got out of control."

Novickis was the one who left the form letters with the district to use in the event of an incident said there have "been zero bed bugs found in schools."

That's something the superintendent wants parents to know. 

"I want to make it clear that there is not an infestation in our schools," Corley said.  "This morning I met with our registered nurses at Shaw High School, they have not seen any bed bugs. We are responding in a pro-active responsive way."

Novickis agrees, but also warns that it's something that school districts in other parts of the country are dealing with on a daily basis. 

New York City for example he says deals with between 300 and 400 incidents a month of either bed bugs found in schools or students with bed bugs at home.

Schools, for the most part, aren't a good home for bed bugs, he adds, but they do serve as a sort of transfer station where they may hitch a ride on one student's backpack and go home with another.