Education Week - January 12, 2022 - 18

Otherwise, said the organization's
president Mike Magee, districts will
have to compete with each other for
a finite number of testing resources.
Smaller districts with fewer resources
will find it particularly difficult to
win those competitions.
" It's every bit that critical to the
life and learning of students across
the U.S. that we solve this problem, "
Magee said. " Otherwise, whether it's
Omicron or a variant down the road,
we are going to have a quarantining
crisis that is, in its essence, a student
absentee crisis. "
Setting up a testing
program is complicated
COVID-19 testing can be a beast
for schools to wrangle, on top of all
the other daily challenges they regularly
face.
When the Somerset district first
Students wait in a line spanning several blocks in order to be tested for COVID-19 outside an elementary school
in northwest Washington, D.C.
4 Reasons COVID Testing
Students and Teachers
Is Now a Nightmare
By Mark Lieberman
The Omicron variant of COVID19
is driving up case numbers across
the country, forcing schools to buckle
in for the long haul on virus testing-
or perhaps try it for the first time.
Figuring out which tests to get,
how often they should be administered,
where to send them for accurate
results, how to pay for them, how
to convince people to use them, and
what policies to enact around them-
all of these duties extend beyond the
typical daily mission of a school system
and its employees.
As staffing shortages and pandemic
chaos persist, COVID-19 testing is
proving a focal point of the challenges
the virus continues to pose for the
safe and stable operation of schools.
The new variant appears to be far
more transmissible than previous
strains, though early indications suggest
it causes less severe disease.
As a result, some public health experts
are urging schools to prioritize
testing as a crucial mechanism for
preventing school closures and keeping
students learning in person.
Mara Aspinall, a health-care consultant
and Arizona State University
professor who's been studying
COVID-19 testing in schools, is one of
those proponents of expanded testing.
But, she said, " schools are not
health-care facilities and they don't
want to be. "
In schools, the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention recently
endorsed the " test-to-stay " model,
in which students who are exposed
to the virus can stay in school and
avoid quarantining at home if they
test negative for it. Some districts
sent tests home with students during
winter break or urged families to test
students on their own before sending
children back to school buildings for
the second half of the school year.
Testing is also gaining prominence
in the broader public as a mitigation
strategy. Starting this month,
Americans will be able to order rapid
tests online from the federal government's
supply of 500 million. Americans
with insurance will soon be eligible
for reimbursement when they
buy rapid tests from local pharmacies
or online stores.
Funding could run out if the
COVID crisis persists
Last fall, 41 percent of respondents
to an EdWeek Research Center
survey of principals, teachers,
and district leaders said their schools
are testing students and staff for
COVID-19. A slightly larger chunk,
47 percent, said they're not testing
anyone. Those numbers have likely
fluctuated since then.
Many school districts are tapping
into the federal relief funds they received
from Congress in 2020 and
2021 to pay for regular COVID-19
testing for students and staff. Those
funds are finite, and the latter set in
particular was pitched as a tool to
help students and schools progress
beyond the effects of the pandemic.
The Medford district in Massachusetts
tests the majority of its 4,000
students once a week. The tests are
grouped into pools of 10 and ana18
| EDUCATION WEEK | January 12, 2022 | www.edweek.org
lyzed by a lab at Tufts University.
Each pooled test costs the district $25.
The next day, the district receives
the results, and gives a rapid antigen
test to students who were in one of
the pools that showed a positive result.
Students who test positive again
are sent home.
David Murphy, assistant superintendent
for the Medford district,
said he isn't concerned for the moment
about the cost of COVID-19
testing, which eats up about $8,500
a week. " What I am concerned
about, if we have to sustain this level
of testing, [is] that's funding that I
would greatly prefer be put toward
teaching and learning initiatives
that can mitigate the effects of the
pandemic from an educational perspective, "
he said.
Other funding sources come with
strings as well. The Somerset district
in Texas secured $2.5 million in fall
2020 from local philanthropists to
test all of its 4,100 students weekly.
Saul Hinojosa, the district's superintendent,
credits the funding with
helping keep school buildings open
and improve student achievement.
But funding from that grant will
run out in the next few weeks, and
the district is now in the process
of lobbying the state for additional
funds, Hinojosa said.
Chiefs for Change, a nonprofit advocacy
group whose members lead
large school districts across the country,
is urging the federal government
and private industry to do everything
they can to resolve supply chain and
logistics issues with manufacturing
and distributing COVID-19 tests.
started regularly testing, the process
ate up more than an hour of students'
time. Now it's down to 15 minutes,
but that came with practice and
streamlined processes over time, Hinojosa
said.
The Massachusetts Department
of Early and Secondary Education
promised to send 200,000 rapid antigen
tests to schools during the winter
break, giving each public school
employee two, but only half the tests
showed up last week, according to
media reports. Citing supply chain
problems, the department urged districts
to either prioritize staff members
who deal directly with students,
or split the two-test kits so each employee
could have one.
make COVID-19 testing more difficult.
The Brewer district in Maine
hired a former worker in the district's
health office to manage testing this
fall. But then she left the area, so
Gregg Palmer, the district's superintendent,
and his secretary have been
filling in.
" Only so many hours in a day, so
yes, it's taken the place of other work
on those days. But that's this year,
doing whatever is necessary, " Palmer
said.
Twenty percent of principals and
district leaders who responded to an
EdWeek Research Center survey in
October said their district is facing
a shortage of nurses, who often play
a crucial role in COVID-19 testing
programs, even as it takes them away
from their daily duties.
The Medford district managed to
hire three additional full-time nurses
this year, on top of more than a dozen
already employed. Those positions
are costing the district $250,000 to
fill, and some districts can't find people
to fill them-but they're crucial,
Murphy said.
" As we are devoting all these staffing
resources to our testing program,
we are leaving ourselves susceptible
to health emergencies that are
the core reason the nursing staff is
there, " he said.
Districts must ensure
enough participation
Even once districts decide to set up
testing programs, they have to contend
with the reality that they can't
force students and staff to participate
to the fullest extent-calling into
question whether the effort is worthwhile
in the first place.
In El Dorado Springs, Mo., some
It's every bit that
critical to the life
and learning of
students across the
U.S. that we solve
this problem.
MIKE MAGEE
President, Chiefs for Change
parents are reluctant to agree to testing
for their children because they're
worried about having to miss work if
their child tests positive, said Heath
Oates, the district's superintendent.
" If, say, a daughter tests positive at
school, that means the family is quarantined.
If dad works a construction
job and only gets paid when he
works, we're talking a week's worth
of wages, or maybe two weeks, "
Oates said. " If no one tests, no loss of
wages. "
That reluctance may prove a logistical
challenge in the face of surging
cases among vaccinated and unvaccinated
populations alike, said Gigi
Gronvall, an immunologist and professor
at the Johns Hopkins University
School of Public Health.
Testing only unvaccinated staff
Similarly
in
Sonoma County,
Calif., the public health department
was scrambling during the Christmas
holiday after its plan to distribute
at-home tests to families before
returning to school ran up against
supply chain delays.
In Chicago, drop boxes for parents'
and students' at-home COVID19
tests were so full that the district
extended the deadline for all families
to test before returning to school
in the new year.
Widespread staffing shortages in
a wide range of K-12 positions also
and students, as many school districts
have been doing, is " no longer
the right way to go forward, " Gronvall
said. " We need to be testing everyone
to best ensure that there's no
COVID-19 in the classroom. "
That means another crucial part of
a successful COVID-19 testing initiative
is strong communication, which
requires dedication and in some
cases, financial resources, to ensure
it's reaching the broadest possible audience.
" It
requires a level of relentlessness
and sophistication that's certainly
not universal, " added Magee,
the Chiefs for Change president.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP

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Education Week - January 12, 2022

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