Corrected and updated Jan. 4, 2020
The School Committee marked the end of 2020 this week by approving free, voluntary weekly COVID-19 screening tests for all students, faculty, and staff. The testing program will begin Tuesday, Jan. 5, and, if support from donations allows, will continue for the rest of the school year.
In a letter to parents Tuesday, School Superintendent Linda Dwight wrote: “To ensure a safer return to in-person learning, we are going to test everyone who agrees to participate on January 5th. That will not be a school day, but become a drive-in testing day.”
The plan is for students who arrive by bus to get off the bus and take the brief test outdoors, then reboard the bus to return home. Parents can also drive their children to Bromfield for their tests, with cars lining up from the Pond Road entrance along the driveway behind the school. Testing is scheduled to begin for children in grades PK-2 and their siblings at 8 a.m., with time blocks designated for grades 3-4, 5, 6-7, 8-10 and 11-12 (and siblings with each group) until 5 p.m. Including siblings allows adults with more than one child in school to make a single trip.
The testing plan for Tuesday is especially complex because all students and faculty are being tested in a single day, Dwight said. During the rest of the school year, testing will be spread over the regular school week.
Plan won unanimous support from School Committee
A local group of parents, led by Liz Ruark and Toby Bazarnik, has been urging the Harvard schools to adopt screening tests since last summer. Screening tests are administered at regular intervals to as many members of the school community as possible, not just those who may have been exposed to the virus or show any symptoms.
A separate state program, already in effect in Harvard schools and many other districts, provides free individual diagnostic tests that school nurses can administer to anyone who has symptoms of COVID-19. That program will continue along with the screening test program for asymptomatic or presymptomatic cases.
In a special meeting Monday, Dec. 28, the School Committee unanimously endorsed the screening program and authorized Dwight and School Committee Chair SusanMary Redinger to sign an agreement with CIC Health, a subdivision of the Cambridge Innovation Center. CIC works in conjunction with MIT’s Broad Institute, which handles COVID-19 testing for many colleges and universities nationwide, as well as public schools in Watertown and Wellesley.
The tests protect the whole community, Ruark said, not just the schools. A person can be infectious for two or three days before showing any symptoms, and those are the cases regular screening is designed to detect. With the tests, Ruark said, “Each child is a sentinel for their family,” and testing can give peace of mind to teachers and families.
Ruark told the School Committee about 80% of the school population—about 800 people including both students and staff—seems willing to take part in the screening program. The estimated cost works out to about $8,000 per week.
Continued testing will depend on donations
In other unanimous votes, the School Committee also agreed to spend up to $11,000 from the Devens fund for the screening tests and to accept two grants of $2,500 each, one from the Harvard Teachers Association and the other from the Parent Teacher Organization. The total of $16,000 is expected to cover the cost of two weeks of testing.
To continue the testing through the rest of the school year, the program will rely on donations. Bazarnick pointed out that dual-career families face a financial loss if one person must cut back or quit working because a coronavirus outbreak forces the schools to shift to fully remote learning. It makes financial sense, he said, for those who can donate to do so. He also plans to approach area businesses that have done well during the pandemic for donations.
The Harvard Schools Trust (HST) has agreed to accept the donations in a separate fund for the testing program. “The Harvard Schools Trust will provide the fiscal structure needed to collect and distribute donations for this effort in the short term,” Terry Symula, the trust’s co-president, wrote in an email to the Press. In a phone conversation, Symula said the testing program will provide a safer environment for teachers and may help more children to attend school in person. Donations to the HST are tax-deductible. Symula said donors can find the trust’s mailing address on its website, www.harvardschoolstrust.org, or donate online.
Bazarnik, Ruark, and other parents have been searching for a cost-effective way to provide weekly screening tests in schools since last summer. The most affordable screening method is pooled testing, in which samples from several people are combined and tested. Only if a pooled sample tests positive for the virus do the members of that pool require individual testing. Reducing the number of individual tests lowers the overall cost.
When the schools first requested proposals for such testing last fall, the price came back at $30 to $35 for each person tested—well above what testing advocates had expected. But a second request for proposals in late November drew more responses, including the one from CIC that was approved this week. CIC will charge $10.50 for testing each person, which is within the range the School Committee had hoped for and allows the screening program to go forward.
Editor's note: After this article was posted, COVID-19 screening tests for students, faculty, and staff in the Harvard schools which was originally scheduled for Monday, Jan. 4, was rescheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 5, because of a forecast for snow and freezing rain Monday morning,
