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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Can we try and figure something out here? It’s been bothering me.

The notices about positive cases often come many days after the notice says the person was “last in the building.” I’ve had several people complain to me that this represents a la if transparency from DCPS. And at first I agreed with them. But then my partner pointed something out and now I don’t know what to think.

Basically, my partner’s argument is that this is what happens:
Day 1- person present in school building
Day 2- person gets Covid test
Day 3-5- person receives positive result (varies based on lab backlog), alerts school
Day 4-7- Contact tracing and close contacts alerted and quarantined
Day 5-8- Notice to school community if positive

Their argument is this is why it takes 5+ days to alert the community. They can’t alert before there is a positive test because otherwise lots of the notices would be withdrawn when it turned out it wasn’t Covid. And preference is given to informing close contacts, which makes sense. It’s not a conspiracy to inform communities late, it’s just the process takes a while.

This makes sense to me even though DCPS has a terrible track record with communication. Seems they could shorten the process if they used rapid antigen tests to ascertain positives, instead of relying on PCR tests that must be processed in a lab. Don’t know if that’s feasible though.[/quote]

Yes this is right.

The problem is that DCPS has no actual testing plan.  They mostly send people home and tell them to get tested.

What they SHOULD do is have a big stack of rapid tests at every school, and the second someone has a symptom they should be rapid tested, PCR tested, and then sent home.
If rapid-positive, they have COVID. And then you know.
If rapid-negative, people can relax at least a little, and wait for the PCR test to confirm.

But since DCPS has terrible horrible worthless planning capacity (what do they actually do with the 400 people in central office anyway?!) they didn't buy rapid tests and they didn't arrange for more PCR tests.

Boo.  Call the mayor and tell her to fire the Chancellor and nominate someone who is actually good at managing an organization that needs managing.[/quote]

I would love a testing program like this. Though I agree it's not a realistic goal for DCPS.

However, what they could feasibly do is take the "Test Yourself" program to its logical extension, which is to fully implement it in schools. Kids should get one of the test yourself kids in their backpacks once a week, every week, and the schools should have collection bins on site and be reminding parents to drop off the test when they drop off their kids. Even if they only got 30% compliance, I think it would go a long way to tracking Covid schools. It would not resolve the delays (they are PCR tests and the volume of tests would likely lead to further delays). But if schools were testing 30% or more of their student population every week by sending these kids home, I think we'd all care less about the late notices because we could have a lot more confidence that potential Covid outbreaks would be caught.

Even better if they could combine the program with a program to purchase a bunch of rapid tests to have on hand for symptomatic kids and adults. You can get a set of two Binax rapid tests from CVS for $23. That's cheaper than the PCR tests and surely if DCPS bought them they could get a better deal. And it shouldn't cost much to administer them because they already have testing staff at sites, plus school nurses, and we're only talking about administering the tests to symptomatic people. Sympotmatic adults could administer them to themselves (I've done it, it's not hard).[/quote]

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