Every school district in the country should have had a policy of:
(1) push the start of school back 2 days
(2) saliva PCR for every student on Day 1
(3) results on Day 2
(4) students with negative tests go back to school on Day 3
This country (and each state) spends so much money on so many things that are less important than protecting kids. This should have been simple, but instead it has been a mess. It is infuriating.
We do lunch with our kids and even though itâs a bit of a pain, itâs been worth it to us to keep them safer and even now that they are vaccinated keep them out of what I call the Covid Cafeteria and getting their younger (not yet eligible to be vaccinated) siblings sick.
Last year our kids were only in person from March-May, numbers were trending in a great direction & the school had good lunch plans so we were less worried about it. The lunch plan last year was spaced out and staggered lunchtimes in the cafeteria and every possible day that they could eat outside, they took it. It was just when PE had to be indoors (so they lost half the cafeteria to PE) that instead of cramming them into the half a cafeteria (because if PE was indoors then lunch couldnât be outdoors either), they had them eat in their not so distanced classrooms. We werenât quite comfortable with 25-30 unmasked kids with only 18 inches between desks even with numbers going down, so we would go eat with them on indoor PE days (PE was every Tue and Thur and if the kids didnât know it was outdoor PE, I would call the school 15 min before the start of lunch to verify- sometimes it would get announced the day before that lunch would be outside, but mostly it was a day-of decision).
This year, our spread has been high and hasnât really come down since Delta started climbing in the summer and ICUâs have been functionally full since Aug 23rd. We wouldâve gladly done online school this year, but the program our kids are in wasnât offered online so weâve been doing a lot of mitigation ourselves for our kids to be in person this year. Same school but a new principal and while she is a very sweet lady who has very kindly worked with us on every accommodation we have asked for she is pretty much back to normal business this year, including lunch (from what weâve peeked at when the cafeteria door is open and we are sitting on the the adjacent lawn while we eat, the lunch aides have the kids do a chant when itâs time to be excused and thereâs obviously no masks on, plus no distancing at all, hence why I call it Covid Cafeteria- they do have assigned seats for contract tracing and they space the kids out as much as they can but told us up front it was not going to be as much as last year because they werenât staggering lunches anymore). And so we block out everyday 11:45am-1pm (thankfully DH and I have flexible jobs and very understanding bosses to be able to block out that time) to have them eat in our car or on the lawn if itâs a nice day.
After the second week the school office got to know who we are really well and they realized we werenât taking them off campus, so told us not to sign the kids out ( the kids just come straight to the office while the rest of their class comes to lunch & the office windows look right over the parking lot and front lawn so they could absolutely keep eyes on us the whole time if they wanted to- and I think the main secretary generally keeps an eye out on that front lawn & parking lot anyway, she is always noticing a lot of the goings on when I chat with her).
So I think if you have the flexibility in your day and it would put you at ease, itâs absolutely a great idea, especially if your hospital capacity is looking anything like what we are about to run into in our neck of the woods (not good).
There is not the supply. To have the supply, I think everyone would have had to have seen omicron coming from much further ahead. School had been pretty safe (with masks anyway) and the vaccines for kids were on the horizon.
But seriously there are so many school kids in this country. Would have been nice but not feasible especially when everyone comes back from break pretty much the same day. Not even like start of school when itâs staggered over a month by region. 
I donât know any school districts where I live that do any kind of testing in schools at any time. So that kind of policy was never going to happen here. I donât know if I would want them to honestly. Apparently you can test one day and be positive the next. I just saw an ice skater tested positive for Covid after getting vaccinated, boosted, isolating from holiday gatherings and testing negative to be able to go to the US championships. So in your scenario, students could test, get a negative and then be unknowingly positive on day 3.
Our school screened the whole campus on the way into day 1 after break and had at least one positive case with class in modified quarantine on day 2.
Iâm still happy they did the testing as it weeded out some post holiday cases. But itâs not a zero Covid strategy. Itâs a keep enough staff healthy to keep school open strategy. (So Iâm agreeing with your point.)
16 days until WDW. People travelling with us decided to take antigen test, since the trip is soon - 1 turned up positive 
(Asymptomatic) Hopefully the others stay negative. The one is getting a PCR test to confirm & isolating from the rest of the household. I plan to do antigen test two days before - in case I have to cancel the flight 
(âŚgranted, Iâm low risk, work from home, avoid people)
Again, I think you are missing his point. (And mine.)
Sadly, I think you are (understandably) reading through the eyes of an educator that has been beat up at every turn and have come to expect it. I really donât think thatâs his intent at all. (And it certainly wasnât mine.)
This is where he starts:
This is where he lands:
I think his point is âhow are people that donât do this professionally every day supposed to keep up when we as professionals can barely keep up.â And âhere is the chart someone should have given them so they realized why the plan couldnât succeed as written.â
It was a good plan until Omicron. Because Omicron.
Educators have been asked to do the impossible the last 2 years. Most have truly stepped up and done their absolute best.
I initially brought up his subsequent post to help anyone else from getting into the same situation if they are doing pooled testing. Bringing up the original post was not to criticize the district, but demonstrating why it is an important consideration, not just some math guy showing off some algorithms.
Sort of. We have a testing center. Iâm not sure itâs well utilized.
But itâs kind of pointless when we literally have some people on the board (enough to control the votes) and some amount of staff that think we shouldnât be doing ANY mitigations. And a good number of parents. We should treat it like the common cold or flu. And really, wouldnât it be best to just let all the kids get it already so we can go back to normal? Apparently seeing my kids wear masks is traumatizing for their kids? Iâm not exaggerating. They donât come right out and say that (well, some of the parents do), but itâs obvious that is their mindset from what they do say.
As a district as a whole, they are doing what the state of Texas requires and not much more. Theyâre only posting a dashboard because they know people will submit endless Request for Public Information forms if they donât.
Those that do care (which includes a lot of teachers and some admin) are trying to do what they can within the governorâs orders and without having access to the resources they could if the district chose. My understanding is the district was entitled to more money for mitigation but didnât ask for it.
This would be a huge waste of money and resources. Even if we werenât strained for testing and lab space, this would still not be smart. It would cost school districts thousands upon thousand of dollars to test millions of asymptomatic kids. It would be one thing if after testing they only interacted with people in their class, but they donât. After school most kids are going to be exposed to several more people during activities or play dates and their parents will be exposed while working as well.
Yeah, I really donât know.
Quite a few experts think this Omicron wave could peak third week of January. We are literally in the situation we talked about in Spring 2020. âFlatten the curve so hospital systems donât get overwhelmed.â Some are already overwhelmed. Hospitalizations will likely peak 2 weeks after cases peak.
This keeps getting worse:
This isnât just about Covid patients. This is about life-saving healthcare availability in general.
Would testing every kid on their way back into school help flatten the curve enough to save some lives? Maybe?
âGet it now or get it laterâ does not yield the same result. Now equals more deaths. After the hospitalizations peak equals less deaths.
Sure, some families are conducting themselves in a way that means they have a lot of exposure points besides school. But a number arenât.
There were experts in the field who saw this as a real possibility, and over the summer were advising that the US needed to stock up on tests in the event this happened.
Since mid-September, our district has been giving a saliva PCR test to each student every Thursday. (There is an opt-out form which about 10% of the parents have filled out so itâs really about 90% of the students who get tested each week). The neighboring districts near us also do PCR tests once a week. Is this unusual in the country?
[quote=âRunningjags, post:5956, topic:79797â]
After school most kids are going to be exposed to several more people during activities or play dates [/quote]
This is exactly why the testing is needed to keep asymptomatic positive kids from spreading Covid in the school and then into homes and into the community. Our school district has asked the community to prioritize education and help keep the schools running safely by not having indoor unmasked activities or playdates. Many comply with this, some donât.
I would guess that amount of testing is unusual. I know it is not the norm in my West Coast large city, my siblingâs university town in Wisconsin, or my nieceâs suburban Boston district. (I am just an elementary-school parent, but they both work in public middle schools.)
Can you please govern my country 
My point is all the comments in the thread. Fine on the original intent- that is not the âtake awayâ of many replies posting (like much of twitter). Maybe I misunderstood some of the comments that made me stop reading
I understand the research in the pooled testing and some comments in another thread that maybe pools of 5 would be better (as noted, it is now 2 for those that pool test).
One final note. This district did use vacation days to do this. They had to extend their school year. Just looking at their calendar it seems like their last day of school, after today, is now June 29th.
We test asymptomatic kids every day (test and stay). Our state uses some federal relief money so that we can do this.
All public schools in MA have access to free rapid tests for test and stay and can do pooled testing.
My kidsâ (small private) school did PCR testing on Monday; they actually do this every Monday. Results were back on Tues. School didnât start back up until Wed, and only those who tested negative on Mon attended. Then they did another batch of PCR tests on Wed, because as @Alewis678 pointed out you can be negative one day and positive the next. Because of the schoolâs diligence, student and staff exposure was minimized.
Not eliminated, though. For the first time in the entire pandemic, one of my kids was a close contact. We found out yesterday. Still, at least we knew about it fairly quickly and can act accordingly to reduce potential community spread. And the school has offered test to stay for us, even though DS9 is vaccinated and not showing any covid symptoms. DS will get a rapid test every day heâs in school for the next week. He wonât get one today though, because itâs a snow day! Or a snow-vid day. 
I get the sense that schools are happy to have an excuse, I mean a reason, to keep everyone home today.
I know of a public school district near-ish by that did drive through testing on Monday in lieu of classes. Theyâll add a day to the end of the year.
Then thereâs the public district we live in. Theyâve been decent overall in terms of precautions, but on New Yearâs Eve they sent parents a notice that if a vaccinated student was a close contact, they would no longer notify vaccinated studentsâ parents. Turns out they were worried about the amount of contact tracing theyâd have to do with Omicron and decided to âstreamlineâ the process by only notifying unvaccinated kidsâ families of close contact status! There was quite an uproar in the community and the district ended up saying that theyâd inform the entire class if there was a case in the class but only the unvaccinated kidsâ families would learn if they were close contacts or not. Iâm not sure how useful this will be, but I guess itâs better than no notification at all.
I donât know whether PCR testing before returning to school would have been feasible for all schools; as it is, PCR tests are taking longer than usual to be processed because of high testing volume, at least around here.
You can stock up on test materials, but you canât stock up lab capacity to process tests nationwide on the same day. At least, I donât think you can. And clearly the nursing staff at some schools are feeling overwhelmed. Though on the flip side, our little school doesnât have a nurse at all and they managed it. Perhaps a more universal test to return to school policy could have worked with rapid tests? Either way, I sure am glad that my kidsâ school tested to return. Based on my family (so, a really robust study 
) it reduced in-school exposure by 50%.
Officially the state DESE and DPH are using this definition: fully vaccinated is still defined as two-weeks following the completion of the Pfizer or Moderna series or two-weeks following a single dose of Johnson & Johnsonâs Janssen vaccine.
Fully vaccinated asymptomatic students/staff do not participate in test and stay, do not have to quarantine and most likely is the reason no notice is sent. (Also, it is impossible to contract trace this month).
I have heard multiple reports of under reporting this weekâs Covid in schools numbers (up to 4 days instead of the usual 5). I know that due to numbers of cases we missed some. Almost 5% of public school students were reported positive in those 4 days and over 8% of staff (never mind those that are home with sick kids or need to find a PCR test to send their children back to child care)
Edited to add: yes, it is a decision by DPH to use their own guidance.
There is a weekly testing on a voluntary basis in the evenings in my district for students and staff but its not widely utilized. There is no in school testing that I am aware of. I think if there was, Iâd have been asked to fill out a permission form. Iâm in western NJ, near the Capitol.
I donât think any of the surrounding towns are doing in school testing either as Iâm friends with some teachers in those towns and they havenât mentioned it.
Yeah, I canât imagine that would have been feasible. Our (tiny islandâs) PCR testing capacity is overwhelmed, but Iâm sure itâs not that different elsewhere thatâs less of a closed system. Our (also relatively small but JK-12 so not actually small) private school required everyone to take a lateral flow test the night before returning in person. So did all of the other private schools. Our twice weekly ongoing testing has an opt out but I think weâre also in the ballpark of 90% compliant. Maybe a bit less as time passes. Hoping between that and a zero tolerance policy for any symptoms of any kind, itâs enough. I definitely feel they did everything they could. And at least weâre not short of rapid tests.
Well today should give the schools a break. My kids are virtual today due to snow.
