Mexico Central Schools is hiring a COVID-19 coordinator, a temporary position approved for at least 18 months of work to provide 24/7 response to the virus and how it affects the district.

The job was posted on OLAS on Sept. 30, with a start date for the position as Oct. 15.

The person Mexico hires will be responsible for coordinating all aspects of COVID-19 quarantine and contact tracing requirements for the district. Work is performed under direct supervision of the superintendent.

The new position of COVID-19 coordinator makes the new hire the point-person for local health departments as they track cases across the school district. The candidate must be able to communicate with building staff and parents on the status of COVID-19 cases and contact tracing.

Central Square Central School District recently selected a COVID coordinator for their district. 

The salary is $70,000. The position is funded by COVID relief dollars granted to Oswego County for schools. The district applied for the money and the county created the temporary Civil Service job. 

Superintendent Tom Colabufo says that the job is a minimum of a 16-hour work day, meaning it would be less than $16 per hour if it was broken down hourly.

“I have not had a regular weekend, nor have my principals, nor have my nurses, without eight hours of doing COVID contact tracing,” Colabufo said. 

He says most of the district’s staff were tied up with COVID-related matters like contact tracing so much that they were unable to complete their contractual needs for their jobs. 

Colabufo says he’d walk away from family activities to help contact trace. Managing that unsustainable workload pushed him to find a solution. 

“The principals, the nurses, the athletic director, the transportation director, they were all part of the COVID contact tracing,” he said. 

Initially, the coordinator would be paid $100,000 and work between two districts, Hannibal and Central Square. Central Square would have paid $60,000, and Hannibal, a smaller district, would have paid $40,000. 

But within weeks there was a spike in cases, with Central Square seeing about 10 new cases a day. 

The district now has 151 COVID cases. 

“So we said, just before they even get started, they’re probably going to need their own and we’re going to need our own, because when we started the conversation three weeks ago, the numbers weren’t anything like they are now,” Colabufo said. 

Central Square's coordinator started on Sept. 27.