Omicron and rising COVID numbers in Massachusetts have reignited debate over the state’s program for coronavirus testing in public schools. Critics question whether enough students are participating to make the results useful. From WBUR:
Mei Elensary watches her 4-year-old daughter, Mimi, reach for a marker, while her 9-year-old son, Amir, finishes a writing exercise before school.
To Elansary, that didn’t seem like enough. She said taking her daughter to school the next morning was hard. However, data from school districts suggest otherwise. Just about 25% of students participate in coronavirus testing in Lowell Public Schools. In Lawrence and Springfield, it’s about 40% of students. In Cambridge, participation is significantly higher — around 75%.
Bisola Ojikutu, the director of the Boston Public Health Commission, which advises Boston Public Schools, is among a group of public health experts, local school officials and parents that have advocated for automatic enrollment in testing, and allowing parents to notify the school if they don’t want to participate.
The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education declined interview requests for this story, but said in an email that “participation in COVID-19 testing requires the school to disclose a student’s identity, demographic, and contact information from education records to the testing provider." As the school year started, it became clear to Erin McManus, a BPS nurse at the Thomas Edison School in Brighton, that despite the state hiring an outside contractor — CIC Health — to administer the testing program, much of the enrollment effort, and sometimes the testing itself, was falling to individual schools and their nurses.
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