Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
Mail arriving at schools throughout the county is now opened using a precise set of 18 steps.
By ROBERT KING
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 23, 2001
For the past five years, sorting mail was just a small task that Parrott Middle School secretary Donna Michaelessi performed each day between phone calls.
These days, sorting the school's mail is so complicated it bears similarities to surgery.
Michaelessi opens the mail at a preset time and in an isolated room. She wears a mask, a gown and rubber gloves. With letter opener in gloved hand, she follows a precise set of steps -- 18 in all -- that guide her through the procedure.
Even if there are no complications, the job can take as long as two hours. Only then will people at the school get the mail they've been waiting for.
Welcome to life in the age of terror, where schools even in a remote corner of Hernando County sort through their mail under the assumption that anthrax is just a postage stamp away.
Hernando County's schools have been living this way since Oct. 15, when safety officials mandated new procedures that turned a once-mindless task into a precise operation -- all at the urging of county emergency management officials and the state Department of Education.
Every school follows guidelines set down in an 18-point memo designed "to protect students and staff from the threat of anthrax," as it bluntly states.
Primarily, the procedures aim to limit the number of people -- and rooms -- that are exposed to potentially harmful pieces of mail. Contamination from a potentially deadly disease aside, schools and offices around the country have been plagued by time-consuming hoaxes that force people and buildings out of action for days at a time.
"We worry about what everybody else worries about," said Barry Crowley, the district's coordinator of safety and security.
School officials admit that a real attack is unlikely.
"I think it is virtually nil, nonexistent," said Parrott principal Marvin Gordon.
Gordon never gave the school's mail-sorting procedures a thought before the anthrax mail scare. Now he accepts them as a fact of the times.
"That is the attitude of our country now," he said. "I guarantee you that each one of us takes a closer look at our current environment we are in. When you go out shopping or dining or out to a game, you do think about your surroundings more than you thought about it prior to Sept. 11."
The new procedures include instructions on how to double-wrap suspicious mail in sealable plastic bags and a reminder to call 911 in a pinch. They do a good job of conveying the seriousness of the situation. Fortunately, Michaelessi doesn't scare easily.
"I'm fine with it," she said. "Someone has to do it, so it might as well be me."
One change is that student aides are no longer allowed to handle mail. But probably the most significant change is that every piece of mail going into schools or offices now gets opened by a mail sorter before it reaches its intended recipient.
So far, officials say people who have had the situation explained to them are understanding about having their mail opened. Of course, there are one or two exceptions.
But even now, employees who receive mail marked "private" or "confidential" have the opportunity to come open the item themselves -- in the mail room. Otherwise, it gets a going-over from the trained mail sorters.
"I open it up, and I turn it upside down," Michaelessi said. "I don't read the mail. If it doesn't pertain to me, then it's none of my business."
The volume and type of mail that flows into school offices vary.
The Robert R. Moton Early Intervention Center in Brooksville gets only five to 10 pieces a day. Parrott and other schools can get a basket a day, or five to 10 baskets approaching the Christmas holidays.
The mail ranges from transcripts for newly arrived students to magazine subscriptions for the library to mail solicitations aimed at educators -- in other words, junk mail for teachers.
-- Staff writer Robert King covers education in Hernando County and can be reached at 754-6127. Send e-mail to rking@sptimes.com.