Test To Return for DCPS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The requirement is absurd and we decided last night that we will not comply. Enough is enough. Here is the email I just sent to my school principal. I encourage others who have similar views to reach out to their principals. I'll let you know what happens!

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Dear [XXXX]:

I hope you’re having a good summer. I know this is a busy time of year so I will get right to the point.

I saw the news yesterday that DCPS will require all students to provide proof of a negative Covid test on the first day of school.

As a family we have decided that we will not comply with this requirement. I will spare you an extended discussion of our views that this requirement is deeply silly. In case it is helpful to know, our family is fully vaccinated and takes care to isolate and mask when we know one of us has been exposed to Covid. And we keep our kids home from school when they show any sign of illness.

The bottom line is that we are no longer willing to burden our kids with public health mandates not shared by the broader society.

So here is my ask:

(1) I don’t know if you have discretion related to enforcement of this requirement. If you do, I ask that you exercise this discretion.

(2) If you do not have discretion or are not able to exercise it (either of which I respect and understand), can you please let me know how I can escalate this within DCPS? Rather than a substantive response to this email, I would welcome you simply forwarding this email on to an appropriate person in the DCPS central office.

My goal is to resolve this within the next two weeks. Please know that – in any event – I will seek to avoid embarrassing my kids or [SCHOOL] staff on the first day of school. That is, we will not simply show up and make a scene.

Thanks as always for your work.

The school will test your child when they first set foot in the building. If that is OK with you. If not they will sit at the front office until you back down or it goes higher. Your decision. I'll be testing my kids because it takes 15 seconds and I'm done with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And principals have enough to deal with without the histrionics of over privileged parents whining about taking a free test that takes all of a few minutes to administer to determine if their kids has a easily communicable disease…

Perfectly stated. Just do the test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And principals have enough to deal with without the histrionics of over privileged parents whining about taking a free test that takes all of a few minutes to administer to determine if their kids has a easily communicable disease…

Perfectly stated. Just do the test.

Honestly your attitude makes me more likely to fake the test. So congratulations, I guess?

[Anonymous]

Everyone saying “testing is not invasive and not a big deal” is missing the point. This is covid theater pure and simple. Most other districts throughout the country, including in blue states, aren’t requiring this before school starts. DC holding on to something like testing before school is a sign it is not following public health guidance and hasn’t moved on in an appropriate, informed way, which makes many of us nervous we’re looking at more silly quarantines and closures when/if cases go up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And principals have enough to deal with without the histrionics of over privileged parents whining about taking a free test that takes all of a few minutes to administer to determine if their kids has a easily communicable disease…

Perfectly stated. Just do the test.

Honestly your attitude makes me more likely to fake the test. So congratulations, I guess?

DP. No most people are adults. People who fight tests are whiny. Grow up!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everyone saying “testing is not invasive and not a big deal” is missing the point. This is covid theater pure and simple. Most other districts throughout the country, including in blue states, aren’t requiring this before school starts. DC holding on to something like testing before school is a sign it is not following public health guidance and hasn’t moved on in an appropriate, informed way, which makes many of us nervous we’re looking at more silly quarantines and closures when/if cases go up.

It isn’t Covid theater. Kids who are asymptomatic with Covid need to go home to contain the spread. Some kids aren’t vaccinated or have family members who are immunocompromised. Other states don’t have the resources to test to return.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone saying “testing is not invasive and not a big deal” is missing the point. This is covid theater pure and simple. Most other districts throughout the country, including in blue states, aren’t requiring this before school starts. DC holding on to something like testing before school is a sign it is not following public health guidance and hasn’t moved on in an appropriate, informed way, which makes many of us nervous we’re looking at more silly quarantines and closures when/if cases go up.

It isn’t Covid theater. Kids who are asymptomatic with Covid need to go home to contain the spread. Some kids aren’t vaccinated or have family members who are immunocompromised. Other states don’t have the resources to test to return.

Resources are not the reason other states aren’t testing to return. It’s because it’s a waste of time and we need to move on. And every teacher and student I know traveled all over this summer. People are not staying home all the time. That ship has sailed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The requirement is absurd and we decided last night that we will not comply. Enough is enough. Here is the email I just sent to my school principal. I encourage others who have similar views to reach out to their principals. I'll let you know what happens!

--------------------------------
Dear [XXXX]:

I hope you’re having a good summer. I know this is a busy time of year so I will get right to the point.

I saw the news yesterday that DCPS will require all students to provide proof of a negative Covid test on the first day of school.

As a family we have decided that we will not comply with this requirement. I will spare you an extended discussion of our views that this requirement is deeply silly. In case it is helpful to know, our family is fully vaccinated and takes care to isolate and mask when we know one of us has been exposed to Covid. And we keep our kids home from school when they show any sign of illness.

The bottom line is that we are no longer willing to burden our kids with public health mandates not shared by the broader society.

So here is my ask:

(1) I don’t know if you have discretion related to enforcement of this requirement. If you do, I ask that you exercise this discretion.

(2) If you do not have discretion or are not able to exercise it (either of which I respect and understand), can you please let me know how I can escalate this within DCPS? Rather than a substantive response to this email, I would welcome you simply forwarding this email on to an appropriate person in the DCPS central office.

My goal is to resolve this within the next two weeks. Please know that – in any event – I will seek to avoid embarrassing my kids or [SCHOOL] staff on the first day of school. That is, we will not simply show up and make a scene.

Thanks as always for your work.

The school will test your child when they first set foot in the building. If that is OK with you. If not they will sit at the front office until you back down or it goes higher. Your decision. I'll be testing my kids because it takes 15 seconds and I'm done with it.

NP and I don’t think this will happen. Keeping a kid from going to school is technically a suspension. I’m sure the parents could easily contact a lawyer and not have to test. They won’t suspend kids for throwing furniture at teachers. They are not going to suspend a kid who won’t get a Covid test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone saying “testing is not invasive and not a big deal” is missing the point. This is covid theater pure and simple. Most other districts throughout the country, including in blue states, aren’t requiring this before school starts. DC holding on to something like testing before school is a sign it is not following public health guidance and hasn’t moved on in an appropriate, informed way, which makes many of us nervous we’re looking at more silly quarantines and closures when/if cases go up.

It isn’t Covid theater. Kids who are asymptomatic with Covid need to go home to contain the spread. Some kids aren’t vaccinated or have family members who are immunocompromised. Other states don’t have the resources to test to return.

If you think that kids who are asymptomatic need to be kept at home, I have bad news for you about every other day of the year when they're not doing this. Kids who are not vaccinated are already at low risk (because they're kids and because they've probably already been exposed to it), but if you absolutely cannot be exposed to COVID, this is providing you with a false sense of security because nothing short of living by yourself and having basically no contact with other humans is going to keep you from being repeatedly exposed to COVID.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone saying “testing is not invasive and not a big deal” is missing the point. This is covid theater pure and simple. Most other districts throughout the country, including in blue states, aren’t requiring this before school starts. DC holding on to something like testing before school is a sign it is not following public health guidance and hasn’t moved on in an appropriate, informed way, which makes many of us nervous we’re looking at more silly quarantines and closures when/if cases go up.

It isn’t Covid theater. Kids who are asymptomatic with Covid need to go home to contain the spread. Some kids aren’t vaccinated or have family members who are immunocompromised. Other states don’t have the resources to test to return.

School closures and quarantines did very little if anything to contain the spread. Just as schools were not shown to be major contributors to community spread. Asymptomatic testing does not contain the spread and is a waste of time and resources. It’s a virtue-signaling gesture. Nothing more. Vaccines are available to all school-ages kids. I am fully vaccinated and boosted and am not worried about my fully vaccinated and boosted child going to school with an symptomatic kid. It’s time to move on in a reasonable way.

[Anonymous]

*not worried about my fully vaxed and boosted kid going to school with an asymptomatic kid. Time to move on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone saying “testing is not invasive and not a big deal” is missing the point. This is covid theater pure and simple. Most other districts throughout the country, including in blue states, aren’t requiring this before school starts. DC holding on to something like testing before school is a sign it is not following public health guidance and hasn’t moved on in an appropriate, informed way, which makes many of us nervous we’re looking at more silly quarantines and closures when/if cases go up.

It isn’t Covid theater. Kids who are asymptomatic with Covid need to go home to contain the spread. Some kids aren’t vaccinated or have family members who are immunocompromised. Other states don’t have the resources to test to return.

By that logic we would need to test every day but that is completely ridiculous. Vaccinations and watching for symptoms is what we should be doing. Testing on one random day is just theatrics. And it continues to teach our kids to fear COVID when we are well past that point and should be helping them to move on and learn to live with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone saying “testing is not invasive and not a big deal” is missing the point. This is covid theater pure and simple. Most other districts throughout the country, including in blue states, aren’t requiring this before school starts. DC holding on to something like testing before school is a sign it is not following public health guidance and hasn’t moved on in an appropriate, informed way, which makes many of us nervous we’re looking at more silly quarantines and closures when/if cases go up.

It isn’t Covid theater. Kids who are asymptomatic with Covid need to go home to contain the spread. Some kids aren’t vaccinated or have family members who are immunocompromised. Other states don’t have the resources to test to return.

By that logic we would need to test every day but that is completely ridiculous. Vaccinations and watching for symptoms is what we should be doing. Testing on one random day is just theatrics. And it continues to teach our kids to fear COVID when we are well past that point and should be helping them to move on and learn to live with it.

We use both both periodic, incidental and random sampling techniques to measure all sorts of things. To suggest that using these techniques means it's necessary to "to test every day" is completely wrong and a misunderstanding of the value of fairly basic statistics that are used in not only epidemiology but many other disciplines as well. If application of basic statistics teaches your children to "fear COVID", you probably should probably spend a bit of time on wikipedia so you can better explain to them why it's a useful technique that in no way impedes your ability to get vaccinated or watch for symptoms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone saying “testing is not invasive and not a big deal” is missing the point. This is covid theater pure and simple. Most other districts throughout the country, including in blue states, aren’t requiring this before school starts. DC holding on to something like testing before school is a sign it is not following public health guidance and hasn’t moved on in an appropriate, informed way, which makes many of us nervous we’re looking at more silly quarantines and closures when/if cases go up.

It isn’t Covid theater. Kids who are asymptomatic with Covid need to go home to contain the spread. Some kids aren’t vaccinated or have family members who are immunocompromised. Other states don’t have the resources to test to return.

By that logic we would need to test every day but that is completely ridiculous. Vaccinations and watching for symptoms is what we should be doing. Testing on one random day is just theatrics. And it continues to teach our kids to fear COVID when we are well past that point and should be helping them to move on and learn to live with it.

We use both both periodic, incidental and random sampling techniques to measure all sorts of things. To suggest that using these techniques means it's necessary to "to test every day" is completely wrong and a misunderstanding of the value of fairly basic statistics that are used in not only epidemiology but many other disciplines as well. If application of basic statistics teaches your children to "fear COVID", you probably should probably spend a bit of time on wikipedia so you can better explain to them why it's a useful technique that in no way impedes your ability to get vaccinated or watch for symptoms.

If the point of this is to keep people from being exposed to COVID then, yeah, doing it one day isn't getting you anything. Could it theoretically tell you something interesting about prevalence? Potentially, but that's not the justification anyone is offering.

The CDC does not recommend this. Virtually no one else is doing it. It's not the case that you alone understand science and everyone else should read a Wikipedia article. Please.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone saying “testing is not invasive and not a big deal” is missing the point. This is covid theater pure and simple. Most other districts throughout the country, including in blue states, aren’t requiring this before school starts. DC holding on to something like testing before school is a sign it is not following public health guidance and hasn’t moved on in an appropriate, informed way, which makes many of us nervous we’re looking at more silly quarantines and closures when/if cases go up.

It isn’t Covid theater. Kids who are asymptomatic with Covid need to go home to contain the spread. Some kids aren’t vaccinated or have family members who are immunocompromised. Other states don’t have the resources to test to return.

By that logic we would need to test every day but that is completely ridiculous. Vaccinations and watching for symptoms is what we should be doing. Testing on one random day is just theatrics. And it continues to teach our kids to fear COVID when we are well past that point and should be helping them to move on and learn to live with it.

We use both both periodic, incidental and random sampling techniques to measure all sorts of things. To suggest that using these techniques means it's necessary to "to test every day" is completely wrong and a misunderstanding of the value of fairly basic statistics that are used in not only epidemiology but many other disciplines as well. If application of basic statistics teaches your children to "fear COVID", you probably should probably spend a bit of time on wikipedia so you can better explain to them why it's a useful technique that in no way impedes your ability to get vaccinated or watch for symptoms.

DCPS is not testing to monitor rates. They are doing it as a one-time screening. Totally pointless.