Easthampton school district receives at-home tests as part of state program

Date: 2/1/2022

EASTHAMPTON – During a meeting on Jan. 25, Superintendent Allison LeClair informed the School Committee that the state’s at-home testing program that was recently introduced is now available in Easthampton Public Schools.

Under this new program, K-12 schools are receiving at-home testing kits for staff and families – unvaccinated or vaccinated. Students and employees in every school district that participates will have the opportunity to be tested twice a week – once by taking part in pooled testing, and once by using the at-home testing kit. Per state requirements, schools participating in the at-home testing program must participate in symptomatic and/or pooled testing.

“The purpose is really to allow people to get tested two times per week to put people’s minds at ease more,” said LeClair. According to the superintendent, the COVID-19 response team conducted an emergency meeting with the city’s Health Department and decided that this testing option was in the best interest to students and staff.

In support of the program, the Baker-Polito administration recently announced a contract with iHealth to purchase 26 million rapid antigen tests. The at-home kits arrived for staff on Jan. 25, and the district began its distribution of the tests on Jan. 27. Students began to receive their at-home kits during the week of Jan. 31.

Every two weeks, students who have opted in will receive an at-home rapid test kit. Each kit contains two individual tests and students will administer one test each week on the day indicated by the school principal. If an individual tests positive at home, they should inform their school of the result and schools will report positive cases to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education as part of the weekly COVID-19 reporting already in place.

With the new program, the school district will now officially discontinue test-and-stay and contact tracing for the most part, though nurses will still conduct special contact tracing for preschoolers, if need be. The reasoning for this is test-and-stay was not as efficient at catching positive cases across school districts statewide, according to LeClair. Students and staff also did not qualify for test-and-stay unless they were unvaccinated, whereas this new program allows anyone to participate. “If you participate in this new program, you lose the option of test-and-stay,” said LeClair.

An email was sent out to families and staff a couple of weeks ago with a link that guides people to where they can sign up for this new at-home program. Even if people are signed up for pool testing already, they still need to additionally opt in to the at-home program. Families must still report if a student receives a positive test.

According to School Committee member and local epidemiologist Megan Harvey, 472 students have opted into rapid testing, as of press time, which is not as much as the district would have hoped. Comparatively, 1,200 people between students and staff had signed up for pooled testing.
LeClair also reported that a new spectator mandate for school sporting events would be in place for at least two weeks, as of press time. Under this new mandate, each athlete will be allowed to have up to four spectators at their respective sporting events. Other students can attend, but they would have to attend as the guest of the athletes on the team. This decision was also decided by the COVID-19 response team.

The city’s Health Department will have high quality KN-95 masks at athletic events and encourage families to wear these or surgical masks when they are present within the gymnasium. “I think we’ll see how it goes, and then we’ll reassess with the COVID response team in two weeks,” said LeClair, when speaking on the new mandate.

The school district had a no-attendee rule prior to this most recent decision. “I think if we do this in a responsible manner, and really limit the number of people that can be with an athlete, then I think that that will put some parameters around it,” said LeClair. “We don’t want to land there forever, but I think it’s a good start.”