‘We need everyone’s help.’ Wake schools to start voluntary COVID-19 testing program
The Wake County school system will begin encouraging students and school employees to voluntarily take COVID tests but the tests will become mandatory for some workers.
Wake has been slow to start a COVID testing program, citing the logistical difficulties of testing a district that has 160,000 students and more than 18,000 employees. But with COVID numbers rising, the school board directed staff on Tuesday to get a voluntary testing program going now.
“If we’re going to get this under control, if we’re going to wrap our arms around this, we need everyone’s help in asking all of our students, faculty, staff and employees to help us in this effort and voluntarily test, whether you’re vaccinated or unvaccinated,” said school board chairman Keith Sutton. “Testing helps us.”
But the testing will switch to mandatory for some groups. A pending federal mandate will result in unvaccinated school employees getting weekly COVID testing. The district may also require student-athletes to get tested.
Under the proposed model, Wake would work with Mako Medical, the vendor in a state program to help schools do COVID testing. The voluntary tests would be sent to Mako, which would test samples. A positive result would result in more detailed testing at particular schools.
Parental consent would be needed before students could be tested.
Testing a burden for school district
Several parents complained during public comments at Tuesday’s school board meeting that the district has been too slow in starting testing, especially at a time when so many students aren’t eligible for the vaccine. Wake barely met the September deadline to indicate they’d be interested in joining the state testing program.
“Your failure to adopt testing offered by the state and recommended by every major health organization in a timely manner has endangered keeping kids in school for thousands of them,” said John Scarborough, the parent of an elementary student.
Mako will handle the screening testing, doing mass testing. But the district would have to provide its own staff or hire a company to do the more detailed diagnostic testing.
School administrators cited Tuesday how the district is so short-staffed that they couldn’t provide staff to administer tests.
“WCPSS staff not engaging in the testing is a decision that leadership is making that we would hope that the board supports because our schools are taxed enough as it is already with everything they’re having to deal with the current levels of contact tracing that are happening,” said Superintendent Cathy Moore. “In order to maintain the in-person learning that needs to happen, that needs to be the priority.”
But multiple board members said Tuesday that the district can’t afford to wait any longer on getting at least a voluntary testing program running.
“We should have been testing, like, yesterday,” Sutton said. “The burden is going to be high. There is going to be an additional burden. There is no way around that.”
Sutton said voluntary COVID testing will help in three areas: minimize COVID contact and spread, minimize quarantines and protect those who are unvaccinated.
But school board member Roxie Cash, who works in a hospital as a pharmacist, said voluntary testing by vaccinated employees could cause problems. She cited how hospitals have had shortages because so many vaccinated nurses tested positive.
“We have to be prepared that if we do this with vaccinated teachers, we could have a bigger teacher shortage,” Cash said.
Most school employees are vaccinated
The planned voluntary testing for school employees will switch to mandatory testing in the near future.
Wake must follow a new federal requirement that employers with at least 100 employees get their workers fully vaccinated or give them weekly COVID tests. A survey of district employees shows that close to 90% say they have received the COVID vaccine or plan to do so.
Wake school leaders are wrestling with whether to require employees to be vaccinated. Some districts, such as Chapel Hill-Carrboro, Orange County and Durham Public Schools, plan to make the COVID shot a condition of staying employed.
Wake school employees will have to be vaccinated if they work for Head Start, a federally funded program to help low-income children ages 3 to 5. The anticipated deadline for those employees to get vaccinated is January.
According to data presented Tuesday, 472 of Wake’s 18,195 employees, or 2.6%, say they have no plans to get vaccinated.
But the bulk of Wake’s school staff, 85.9% say they’re fully vaccinated, with 1.5% saying they’re partially vaccinated and 1.4% saying they’re planning to get vaccinated.
Wake is still waiting to hear back from around 1,500 school employees who haven’t filled out the online survey.
This story was originally published September 21, 2021 at 6:10 PM.
