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Date: 10/20/2021
WESTERN MASS. – Staffing and supply shortages hobbled the roll-out of pooled testing for COVID-19 in schools across the commonwealth, but local parents need not fret.
ov. Charlie Baker mobilized 200 National Guard troops to help with the pooled testing in schools, an indication of the increased demands on school nurses the testing creates. According to a press release from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) National Guard troops began serving in select schools around the state on Oct. 18.
Local districts, however, are not among those in need of the National Guard Support.
Pooled testing is a method of surveillance for the virus, while diagnostic testing kicks in after a positive reading. The swabs are sent in tubes that hold 16 samples each, which are tested in batches, a strategy that conserves testing supplies. Only if a tested batch returns a positive result is each sample tested.
“Say we send off 150 swabs in those tubes, and if [a tube] comes back negative – and these are PCR tests – if they come back negative it means everyone in that school is negative,” explained Union 38 and Frontier Regional School District Nurse Manager Meg Burch. “If one comes back positive it tells us that the virus was detected in that tube, [that] some sample had virus … It’s a way to conserve on supplies by testing a large pool of people.”
Before this school year began, however, the state opted to utilize one vendor, CIC Health, for this surveillance testing during the 2021-22 school year and from the start there were issue with delays on getting the staff to schools for testing around the state. This has been the case in the Amherst-Pelham Regional Schools (APRS).
While Amherst-Pelham Regional School Committee initially explored taking advantage of National Guard’s assistance at its Oct. 12 meeting, it determined it could avoid using the resource altogether.
In a statement regarding pool testing, the Amherst-Pelham Regional School Committee on Oct. 15 said, “The committee has consistently and strongly advocated for regular COVID testing in our schools as one of the key pieces of the layered protection we put in place to help keep our students and staff safe in school. We have been frustrated by the extended delay in getting the state-supported pooled testing program up and running. A few factors are causing the delay, one of which is the challenge the implementation contractor is having in finding and hiring staff in our region.”
Before its next meeting, the committee will be taking the necessary steps in receiving feedback from the community and finding information on the logistics of the program from DESE.
The committee continued the statement by saying, “We have not seen COVID cases spread within our schools and there has not been a single new COVID case in our schools in the last 15 days. Over 80 percent of our students over age 12 and an equal percentage of our staff are fully vaccinated. Finally, our school nurses are fully trained and have already been administrating BINAX and test-and-stay COVID tests. For these reasons, the committee felt comfortable taking the time to solicit community feedback and ensure we are able to make a fully informed decision … since our last meeting, we have learned that the contractor now expects to have the program operational in our district, using their own hired staff, on approximately the same timeline it would take to implement the program using the National Guard. We are pleased to know that we can anticipate testing at the elementary level beginning the week of Oct. 25 and at the regional level the following week.”
State Rep. Mindy Domb has been a vocal advocate for getting the proper resources in order to carry out pooled testing in the district.
“My advocacy around it was really about the statewide promise that Gov. Baker made to districts and families across the state that said when school would resume in person, they would be able to get a free state service for pool testing in their schools and this pool testing was essential to keep our kids safe,” Domb said. “By the end of September, a month into school, many of them had still not received the service.”
The explanation provided by the state revolved around issues with staffing where the state was not prepared for the number of school districts interested in following through with the pooled testing program. According to data published by the Boston Globe, as of Oct. 7 about 1,350 out of 2,200 schools participating in the testing programs have reported results.
Domb had sent a letter to the governor and others from the state requesting assistance in carrying out this promise of testing during a key public health intervention revolved around students and urged the state to bring in the National Guard for assistance.
The National Guard’s assistance has been common during the pandemic. They have been pulled into assisting in makeshift hospitals, setting up vaccination clinics, and in some cases this year, have been brought in to drive school buses in understaffed areas.
Hadley Superintendent Anne McKenzie said her district also had a delay in starting pooled testing this school year. Eventually, the vendor did confirm to her that specimen collection supplies had been shipped and they were able to begin testing by the end of the month and has been able to since.
“We had been ready since day one, but it took a little bit for the vendor. The volume in demand was the detriment,” McKenzie said. “Last spring, not a lot of districts were doing pool testing, now everyone wants to do it.”
While her schools were able to get testing going by the end of September, they are having their own staffing issues through the school system. Between lunch staff and transportation, Hadley has had their fair share of challenges outside of pooled testing.
“We certainly don’t need [the governor’s assistance] for that [testing]. Across the commonwealth they are facing staff shortages in all kinds of spaces. All of us are experiencing challenges of extreme intensity,” said McKenzie.
“I think the planning here is also an interesting piece that we can deal with once this gets up and running is why were we so ill prepared. I think that’s a question that’s going to need to be asked. The governor knew that he was insisting on every school district being back in person, and they were dangling this intervention as being very important to making sure that that could happen, so why was there a mismatch between how many schools we knew were going back in person and how much capacity we were given for pool testing,” Domb said.
One concern raised at the Oct. 12 Amherst Regional School Committee meeting was the possible triggers for students when seeing or being in contact with National Guard personnel in uniform. This played a factor in the decision making for Superintendent Michael Morris, as the community not only had this worry but also the concern of how quickly this would be implemented in schools without proper notice for the community.
“We heard back that the guard would not be armed but would be in uniform. We are working through options with CIC Health on their plan to add staffing [non-Guard] later today [Oct. 15],” said Morris before the statement from the Regional School Committee was released.
While the start of the testing program in the Union 38 and Frontier Regional Schools has been less than smooth, they have enough supplies and personnel that the National Guard will not be necessary.
“Not in our district,” said Burch.
There won’t be uniforms in Frontier schools, according to Burch, even though the district was among 2,200 schools that applied for staffing assistance. The district ran successful testing programs last year. This year, the problems getting testing under way were partly due to working with the new organization contracted by the commonwealth to implement the program.
“For our district, one of our challenges is that we’ve been doing it with a different partner,” said Burch. “We had a testing program up and running, we worked out many issues with them, but then we had to use CIC Health. They’re the ones that run the ‘Stop the Spread’ websites.”
The district saves money on the program, according to Burch, because it conserves on testing supplies and prevents education days from being lost. A press release from DESE states that 25,000 days of student education were saved through the three assistance programs, symptomatic testing, test-and-stay, and pool testing. Burch acknowledged the district accrues costs from the program, for hiring new staff, though the program also pays dividends by preventing the spread of the virus.
“It has been challenging,” Burch said. “A lot of schools, including ours, have asked for staff to help run the program. That has not been a smooth process, to get staff on board.” The calendar also added to the stress level in the last month or so. “To start a new program at the beginning of the school year, the busiest time for school nurses, it made it difficult, it added to their workload,” Burch said
The challenges appear to be in the rear view mirror. According to Burch, the program completed a round of testing at a school in about three hours. Classroom time is lost, but testing will go more quickly in the future, when set up time is reduced.
“We tested 1,330 students this week, that’s my rough number,” Burch said. “That’s about 75 percent of our elementary population across all five schools. In our elementary schools we tend to have it set up for the day, and the students come to that testing area. Parents have consented to the testing process. We have to have that permission for anyone under 18.”
Burch commented that testing last year in Frontier and Union 38 schools turned up six positive cases of COVID-19. This year, testing has diagnosed three cases.
“If we find a case we can respond quickly,” Burch said. School nurses connect with contact tracers, linked with local boards of health, and the laboratory processing local samples also directly notifies state-level health authorities. “We give initial instructions, then they’ll be tracked by local town health authorities.”