Massachusetts Actually Might Have a Way to Keep Schools Open

[DonViejo]

An ambitious pilot program could finally pave the way to in-person learning—at least for those who can afford it.

KATHERINE J. WU MARCH 4, 2021

The bright-blue tents appeared shortly after the close of winter break. Each Tuesday, Thalia Ruark and her classmates at the Bromfield School in Massachusetts, line up single file, spaced a neat six feet apart, for their weekly coronavirus test. The 11-year-old sixth grader still spends most of her classroom time on a computer at home, in accordance with Bromfield’s hybrid-learning model. But the school’s new testing measures are meant to keep her and her peers safer while they’re at the school, which is in the rural town of Harvard, some 30 miles west of Boston. They enter the tents one by one after sanitizing their hands and blowing their noses; a gowned, gloved, and masked nurse swivels a soft-tipped swab into each of their nostrils. “It kind of makes your eyes water,” Thalia told me. “But it doesn’t really hurt. And it makes my nose feel really clean after we’re done.”

Each week, more than 300,000 students and school staff in Massachusetts are tested as a part of an ambitious and unprecedented statewide experiment, designed to screen for the coronavirus. The state-run pilot funds testing using a cost-saving tactic called pooling, in which multiple people’s samples are processed at once. Already, more than 1,000 schools have opted in, according to Russell Johnston, a senior associate commissioner at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, or DESE.

The program is part of the state’s multipronged response to its fractured education system. Since the fall, new guidance around masking, distancing, and ventilation has allowed a good number of private schools and well-resourced public schools to resume at least some in-person learning; in February, Governor Charlie Baker announced that full-time education on campus might return for elementary-school students as early as April. But many institutions lack the resources to regularly screen students for asymptomatic cases of the coronavirus—infections that could silently seed an outbreak and shut down a district in days.

State-sponsored pooling, run by DESE, promises to change that for those who opt in, at least for the time being. The state is footing the bill for participating schools for the two-month pilot, from mid-February through mid-April, at a cost of $40 million to $60 million, Johnston told me. After that, districts will retain access to labs, testing-services companies, and state-brokered prices, but will need to pay for the program themselves.

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https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/coronavirus-testing-just-might-keep-schools-pandemic-safe/618197