One school employee on the Lincoln preK-8 campus tested positive for Covid-19 last week after the town’s schools began pool testing of some students and staff.
Under the voluntary six-week program that began shortly after the end of February school vacation, participating Lincoln Public School (LPS) students and staff provide a weekly sample via a quick, noninvasive lower nasal swab. The samples from each classroom are tested as a pool using the common PCR test. If a pool returns a positive result, the members of that pool are immediately tested individually using the BinaxNow rapid test.
In the first week of testing, 578 school community members in 74 pools underwent pool testing. This included 52% of eligible students (72% of the Lincoln campus students and 33% of the Hanscom campus students) as well as 73% of eligible staff. Students and staff who are on campus full time and who have not tested positive for Covid-19 in the past 90 days are eligible for testing after they sign a consent form.
The person who tested positive was asymptomatic, but all of their close contacts were identified and notified that they must quarantine at home for 14 days dating from their last exposure with the positive individual. As a result, two classroom cohorts of students and staff as well as two additional individuals were moved to remote learning for their quarantine period, according to Superintendent of Schools Becky McFall.
If someone in a child’s pool tests positive, parents will receive a direct notification and information about the follow-up testing. A general notification will be made each week when all test results have been received and no further results are outstanding.
“While it is never good to learn of someone in our community testing positive, it is helpful to know that the pooled testing process worked and identified an asymptomatic positive person who was unaware that they had contracted the virus,” McFall said in a statement to families and staff. “That is exactly what pooled testing should do to help us ensure that viral spread is minimized. Pooled testing is most effective when everyone who is able to participate gets tested.”
Eligible students and staff who have not yet signed a consent form can participate in future testing if they submit a consent form by noon on Thursday to be included in the following week’s testing pools. Consent forms and details on the program are available on the LPS Pooled Testing web page.
The testing program was launched after the schools saw increased numbers of positive cases and close contacts in the weeks following the Thanksgiving recess and December vacation period. Last week, the school nurse on the Lincoln campus recorded 70 students who traveled out of state over the February vacation. Only 15 of these were known in advance. On the Hanscom campus, administrators know of 24 students who traveled; 18 were known in advance.
“We appreciate that many families provided the necessary test result documentation upon return to school. Students who came to school without travel notification or test results were sent home from school when information about their travel became known,” McFall wrote.
The testing program is funded by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and supported by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
Student/staff survey reveals mixed feelings
In a mid-year survey of staff and students, 84% of families and 54% of faculty and staff reported feeling “extremely safe” or “quite safe” at school from Covid-19 with the current safety protocols. Asked how their children are feeling about school this year, 75–90% families reported that their kids have felt “safe,” “engaged,” “happy,” “excited,” and/or “hopeful” — though only 59% of remote students felt excited about school, vs. 80% of in-person students.
Faculty were also asked how they felt about work, whether in-school or remote, and a majority (62–94%) reporting feeling exhausted, stressed out, and/or overwhelmed. More than 80% of faculty and staff said their work felt “extremely or quite meaningful,” though only 56% said they felt extremely or quite effective at their job.
“When you are teaching in an entirely new model, and you are teaching students who are remote and not in front of you, and you teach with masks on and can’t see each others’ faces, it’s hard to gauge your impact,” said LPS Director of Technology Rob Ford, who announced the survey results at the School Committee’s January 28 meeting.
LPS is among only 3% of Massachusetts school districts that are providing a full-day, full-week in-person option along with a remote learning option. In both models, students are grouped in small cohorts with one learning coach and receive additional real-time instruction via technology. As of January 7, 273 students (26%) are learning remotely and 795 students (74%) are at school, the School Committee reported.