Posted by Amy Sangiolo on behalf of Newton STSS – Kristin Ardlie, Phoebe Olhava, Suzanne Jacobs
As Newton parents, engaged with the Safer Teachers, Safer Students (STSS) testing collaborative, we have been advocating for asymptomatic COVID screening testing in our schools, and are overwhelmingly pleased with the recent announcement that Newton (along with 952 MA schools, Link) is now embarking on testing for students and staff. Newton is expanding on the current asymptomatic testing for staff, at the Ed Center, to include students in a new testing program beginning on March 1. The program will launch first in the North and South High Schools, followed by elementary, and then middle schools.
This testing program is a terrific opportunity for Newton. The vendor JCM Analytics is being used by several STSS districts, and can scale up to serve all of our schools by providing ‘at-home’ testing, and a full solution to finding an individual positive sample in a positive pool. Do not be discouraged by an overload of often complicated information. The registration and testing process is very straight forward: students pick up a nasal swab kit from school, bring the test kit home, collect a sample in the morning before school (wash their hands, blow their nose, swab the inside of their lower nostrils a few times, put the swab in a tube, wash hands again), and bring the tube with the swab sample back to school. That’s it! Our high schoolers can do this easily, and elementary students are fantastic at sample self collection (Video available here.). After the swabs are collected at school, they are sent off to our vendor who groups the samples together in pools for PCR testing – this is cost-effective, fast, and accurate. If a pool is negative, you hear nothing (no news is good news). If a pool is positive, the laboratory immediately re-tests individual samples from that pool to determine which sample is positive. Only the test positive students’ parents and close contacts will be notified. The turnaround is fast, action can be taken rapidly, and this can be done weekly.
This testing program will detect cases in individuals not showing symptoms, so that rapid isolation and contract tracing can stop transmission before spread. Having a high participation rate will make this program most effective – the more we test, the more we’ll know about the safety of our classrooms, and community. We urge all parents to sign up your students for this voluntary free testing program. Instructions for completing the consent form can be found here.
That’s good news indeed.
Fantastic! Thank you to all involved in advocating for this surveillance testing for students and simplifying it for students, teachers and staff with this program. I signed up my 2 high schoolers in less than 5 minutes from Aspen.
This is a critical aspect of keeping our community safe and staying on top of any silent, asymptomatic spread and being aware of any changes in positivity rates as variants increase or as more get vaccinated. I encourage parents to sign their hybrid high school students up for the program!
These three folks and their colleagues are among the hidden heroes of the last several months. They have been pursuing approaches based on science and good practice that both facilitate the reopening of schools and also provide comfort and security to all in the communities in which they have been involved. Their early program in Wellesley, for example, was found to be very helpful and has been instrumental in the statewide program that is now in effect. (More here: https://www.wellesleyeducationfoundation.org/testing-collaborative.)
Newton was not an early participant in the STSS program, although the city was invited, so we lost out on some the advantages that could have been in place. Now, however, it’s time to look forward, and it’s good that our city is prepared to engage fully.
Great news! As someone who’s been working with Phoebe and others to advocate for asymptomatic testing for months, I’m so pleased to see this message.
I want to acknowledge others who have worked to make this possible. We were greatly helped by DESE’s embrace of surveillance testing. I also want to thank my colleague Bridget Ray-Canada who joined me in many STSS meetings through the fall and winter. We have been attending and participating in these meetings since September and have been working collaboratively with many across the state. In particular I want to thank my fellow school committee members/volunteers in other communities – Lauren Nassif (Medway), Charles Donahue (Westwood), Liz Ruark (Harvard), Sharon Gray, Linda Chow and Katie Goehringer (Wellesley), Kristin Pangallo (Salem) and Kathleen Mortimer (Weston). I also want to say thank you to Assistant Superintendents Liam Hurley and Beth Fitzmaurice who figured out how to operationalize the testing. Newton is the largest district attempting to do this and without their logistical and operational skills this never would have been possible.
@Margaret Albright,
Thank you as always for your dedication and hard work, and for shining a bright light on the folks and entities who made this possible and brought this to fruition.
@Amy Sangiolo – my thanks to you as well as I know you have been championing this cause and you have dedicated your time and skills to making this happen.
Joining in with Lisa’s sentiments! Thank you!
As Margaret has shown, there’s a lot to be learned from communication with school committee members from other districts.