CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A dead bat was found at the bottom of a food donation bin at Ardrey Kell High School on Friday.
It comes as students returned to in-person learning on Friday after live bats had been found earlier in the week. On Monday, the school's principal issued a statement saying 20 bats had been found at the school.
"We heard that when they're going through the cans for our local food drive," Mayan Adhikari, an Ardrey Kell High School student said. "They found a couple of dead bats, like in the boxes that's scary... I was one of the contestants. It could have been my box."
On Wednesday and Thursday, the school switched students to asynchronous, remote learning while the school worked to fix the issue.
School officials said the bat found Friday was decomposing and is believed to have been there for "quite some time" and had been overlooked during the building's cleanup earlier in the week.
"We understand that the continued presence of bats in the building is disturbing," the school said in part in an email shared with families. "However, our contracted bat eviction vendor, Mecklenburg County Public Health (MCPH) and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools risk management team determined that the safety and well-being of our students, teachers and staff are not compromised following the bat eviction and thorough clean-up of the school."
One student criticized the district saying they were slow to fix the problem
"It's only like two days ago when they actually started doing something about it," Maxwell Zhao, Ardrey Kell High School student, said.
The school reportedly first found bats at school in March.
To date, 21 bats have been collected and tested. All of the collected animals tested negative for rabies.
Morgan Rafael, the executive director of the Carolina Wildlife Conservation Center, said less than 1% of bat populations carry the deadly rabies virus.
"In order to get rabies from a bat, contact with saliva needs to go into the bloodstream through an eye, an orifice," Rafael said. "The nose and mouth or through a scratch that draws blood and gets into the bloodstream."
But testing for any exposure is both recommended and encouraged.
One student is being treated for preventative measures related to a scratch.
“Kids in the hallway were saying, 'I just stepped on dead bats,' and teachers were sweeping them up in the hallways,” Sophia Margherio, a student at the school, told WCNC Charlotte's Michelle Boudin earlier this week.
“I was using the bathroom and looking at my phone," Sophia recalled. "All of a sudden, a bat from the top of the stall flies down and lands on my leg, and I flick it off, and I start screaming.”
Sophia didn’t realize until she got home that the bat had actually scratched her.
"They did get most of the bats out," Ethan Dippold and Ardrey Kell High School student said Friday. "I think maybe we should have been off today. So they can be sure that we're 100% safe."
School is set to be open on Monday.