Belchertown School Committee moves forward with symptomatic COVID-19 testing

June 20, 2022 | Dennis Hackett
dhackett@thereminder.com

The Belchertown School Committee discusses COVID-19 testing for the upcoming school year.
Reminder Publishing screen capture by Dennis Hackett

BELCHERTOWN – With the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) changing its COVID-19 testing recommendations heading into the 2022-2023 school year, the Belchertown School Committee discussed how to move forward with testing during a June 14 meeting.

To start the testing discussion, School Nurse Leader Phyllis DuComb said DESE recently revised its recommendations for testing going into the summer and beyond.

“DESE has stopped pool testing at the end of each school year, they are recommending – not requiring – symptomatic testing in the summer and in the fall. They have provided us with self-tests for the summer, but it is the district’s responsibility to pay for all the self-tests once the fall comes,” she said.

DuComb said providing self-tests for the upcoming school year could be expensive.

“The cost of the self-tests is kind of surprising to me, it can go anywhere from $32,000 to $624,000 because some distributors only will sell in pallets,” she said. “In 10 months, we did 1,400 symptomatic tests in the schools this past year so I am estimating that we will probably give about 2,000 tests next year.”

Along with moving away from pool testing, DuComb said DESE also changed its stance on polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing.

“DESE is saying that they are not going with a PCR, they are feeling that the rapid antigen test is the way to go at this point coming from their medical advisors. They say that these self-tests are technologically improved,” she said.

In order to continue the pool testing program, Superintendent Brian Cameron said the district would need to do all of the legwork.

“If we decide to do the pool testing next year we have to go out and find someone to do that pool testing,” he said. “I think it’s important that everybody realizes this is no longer free and there is a cost to that.”

By seeking its own pool testing source, DuComb said the cost per year to continue the testing would be $322,800 alongside a delivery cost to ship the pool testing tubes to Boston and the cost of staffing for the testing. With the cost in mind, Cameron recommended moving forward with symptomatic testing.

“We would purchase them strategically so they wouldn’t expire but we would have them on-stie in case students are not feeling well or have any of the COVID[-19]-like symptoms. Our current policy requires staff members that aren’t vaccinated to get tested and they currently test in our pool testing weekly, so I don’t know what the implication would be for those individuals,” he said.

Committee member Michael Knapp said he was in favor of shifting the focus to symptomatic testing.

“In general, moving away from the asymptomatic testing makes a lot of sense and that’s been true for a while and I think emphasizing symptomatic testing makes a lot of sense,” he said.

Committee Chair Heidi Gutekenst said she was still unsure about how to move forward with testing.

“I’m not 100 percent sold on symptomatic testing yet, I feel like I need more information to absorb about it. I’m 100 percent cool with stopping the pool right now, I’m just not ready to 100 percent ready to say yes to symptomatic,” she said.

DuComb said other districts are struggling to move forward with a new method for testing.

“Many of the schools that I’ve talked to are grappling with that; do they do symptomatic testing or not? Some schools are doing symptomatic testing and other schools are the exact opposite, saying they are going to treat it as a virus,” she said. “What makes me want to do the symptomatic is I don’t want to send a student back into the classroom that is COVID [-19] positive that could then spread it to all their peers if we can do a simple test to say you have it or you don’t.”

The committee unanimously voted in favor of focusing on symptomatic COVID-19 testing.

With the cost of food rising and the availability of universal free lunches in the schools for the upcoming year, the committee agreed to increase the price of lunches from $4 to $5 for adult meals, $2.90 to $3.25 for kindergarten through sixth grade and $3.15 to $3.50 for grades 7 through 12. Despite the increase to offset the rising costs, Food Service Director Barrett Grazioso said she hopes the universal free lunch program continues.

“It’s been a very successful lunch program for us, even up until this last week we were still seeing record numbers and that means a lot,” she said. “We’ve moved some food this year, it’s been incredible.”

The committee unanimously agreed to approve the proposed increase in lunch costs.

The Belchertown School Committee next meets on June 28 and coverage of that meeting will appear in the July 7 edition of The Reminder.

Share this: