COVID-19 testing plan for school staff on the way

by | Dec 11, 2020 | Newton | 6 comments

John Hilliard at the Boston Globe reports that the Newton School Dept will be offering new voluntary regular COVID-19 testing for asymptomatic members of the school staff that interact with students.  The plan will be in place before the high school students return to live classes in January.

Here’s the Globe story

6 Comments

  1. NewtonMom
    NewtonMom on December 12, 2020 at 3:32 pm

    We need weekly testing and not monthly testing school wide. Mayor Fuller criticized BC about their testing.

  2. Paul Levy
    Paul Levy on December 12, 2020 at 5:30 pm

    Virtually every newspaper has taken down its firewall for Covid-related stories. Even Stat, the healthcare “vertical” owned by the Globe, is open in that way. But not the Globe. I’d love to know the business logic behind that decision.

  3. Environmental Engineer
    Environmental Engineer on December 14, 2020 at 7:32 am

    Apparently the testing will only be available monthly. What’s the utility of that?

    And why isn’t this important detail available on the city’s public websites and the mayor’s newsletter? This seems another example of making a popular pronouncement that’s ultimately meaningless, as with the earlier example in September about the communication suggesting resumption of in-person high school, which we now see results in fewer than 16 days of in-person schooling for the year.

    https://patch.com/massachusetts/newton/newton-public-schools-eyes-offering-asymptomatic-testing

  4. Jerry Reilly
    Jerry Reilly on December 14, 2020 at 12:04 pm

    @Environmental Engineer – That detail was indeed included in both the the mayor’s newsletter and on the city web site

  5. Environmental Engineer
    Environmental Engineer on December 14, 2020 at 2:45 pm

    Thanks, @Jerry. I’d missed those.

    I still don’t understand the utility of monthly testing.

  6. Newton Teacher
    Newton Teacher on December 14, 2020 at 7:20 pm

    I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth but we as teachers were asked in an email to decide if we would “opt in” to testing. So it sounds like they both don’t have enough tests and or resources to effectively trace, but it’s not required either? I appreciate the attempt at including testing and trying to appease everyone but being monthly and optional and therefore just lip service is such a classic Newton “solution”, it would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious.

    Here’s to hoping the vaccine arrives as quickly as possible!