SWAMPSCOTT ― Students are being given a chance to keep learning in their classrooms in Swampscott. Through a program called Test and Stay, students showing COVID-19 symptoms can take a rapid test, get their results, and head back to class if their result is negative.
“In fact, I wasn’t feeling well last week and I was tested, and in 15 minutes I had my results,” said Superintendent of Schools Pamela Angelakis at a School Committee meeting held on Sept. 22. “It was negative and I stayed at work.”
The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has mandated that schools offer diagnostic COVID-19 testing as well as pool testing. Under the diagnostic testing, there will be the Test-and-Stay program as well as symptomatic testing; Test and Stay is primarily for close-contact cases.
The school system has partnered with Cambridge Innovation Center Health (CIC). A test coordinator assigned to Swampscott schools has met with the principals and with Angelakis and has assigned four staff members from CIC to the school district to help with Test and Stay.
Students and faculty now have the option to continue in classrooms if they’ve had close contact or if they display symptoms, but they must be enrolled in the program. The only downside, in the School Committee’s opinion, is the fact that students enrolled in Test and Stay will also be enrolled in pool testing.
“We will not be testing — and we will be sending home to quarantine — students that are not signed up to test,” Angelakis said. “The downside to this, in my opinion, is you can’t select test and stay and not pool testing.”
Pool testing will be used to determine COVID-19 trends within the school district. Testing began on Monday.
Pool testing will happen on select days and will progress by homeroom, Angelakis said. High-school testing will be on Mondays from 10:48-11:18 a.m. Middle-school testing is split into two days. Testing for fifth grade, seventh grade, and pre-kindergarten is on Monday from 8-8:35 a.m. and testing for sixth and eighth grade is on Tuesday from 8-8:35 a.m. Hadley’s testing will be on Tuesday from 1-2 p.m., and Clarke and Stanley will be Wednesday from 8:20 to 8:40 a.m.
Angelakis said she recognized that parents were concerned about having their students tested routinely, but said that this is how DESE has designed the program for the time being.
“If you’re signing up for one test you’re signing up for all three,” Angelakis said.
