Anonymous wrote:DCPS is not being honest with the number of students or staff quarantining. At my school a class was shut down due to covid exposure. None of the staff was informed. The special teachers didn’t even know. It’s also not appearing on the reopen strong website.

DCPS is, and always will be, about optics as long as it is under mayoral control. This is in regards to COVID rates, graduation rates, grades, suspensions, etc. They do not care about actual data about actual safety or learning.

DCPS is not being honest with the number of students or staff quarantining. At my school a class was shut down due to covid exposure. None of the staff was informed. The special teachers didn’t even know. It’s also not appearing on the reopen strong website.

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Anonymous wrote:I mean, at this stage some might feel better just testing their kids every other day. I'm not judging that choice. I'm just saying that is the only thing in your control.

You KNOW DCPS isn't going to get it together. Some of you suspect this is a deliberate cover-up. Aside from writing to your reps, the near-term solution is testing frequently.

Call your council member and tell them that DCPS needs a better testing plan stat. Council has the authority to fix this.

Best of luck if your council member is Charles Allen. He will listen and so what he does best- nothing!

I thought that was Janeese George's niche. After she gives a quote like "this is bad" or "we don't have a plan".

Oh but at least there is a listening - McDuffie doesn't even pretend to hear you, and then he just says something along the lines of "Black parents want kids to stay home so let's all go virtual!"

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean, at this stage some might feel better just testing their kids every other day. I'm not judging that choice. I'm just saying that is the only thing in your control.

You KNOW DCPS isn't going to get it together. Some of you suspect this is a deliberate cover-up. Aside from writing to your reps, the near-term solution is testing frequently.

Call your council member and tell them that DCPS needs a better testing plan stat. Council has the authority to fix this.

Best of luck if your council member is Charles Allen. He will listen and so what he does best- nothing!

I thought that was Janeese George's niche. After she gives a quote like "this is bad" or "we don't have a plan".

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean, at this stage some might feel better just testing their kids every other day. I'm not judging that choice. I'm just saying that is the only thing in your control.

You KNOW DCPS isn't going to get it together. Some of you suspect this is a deliberate cover-up. Aside from writing to your reps, the near-term solution is testing frequently.

Call your council member and tell them that DCPS needs a better testing plan stat. Council has the authority to fix this.

Best of luck if your council member is Charles Allen. He will listen and so what he does best- nothing!

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Anonymous wrote:The binax now tests should be used together. One box = two swabs = one round of testing.

Sorry, I’m confused … it’s not two separate tests per box?

It is but they recommend you do both tests, with time in between, to guard against false positives/negatives.

We instead do one test and then a PCR. Because the PCR is very accurate. And if you get one positive and one negative antigen test, you will have to do a PCR anyway.

If you're symptomatic, the antigen (rapid/Binax) is very accurate. For the global "test to stay" policy, antigen tests are sufficient to reduce spread and minimize quarantine. The complete testing and quaranting policy could rely completely on rapid tests to work. On a personal level you might want the additional accuracy of a PCR, but on an overall level, not necessary. Anyway this is all academic because I don't think we have enough rapid tests ...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The binax now tests should be used together. One box = two swabs = one round of testing.

Sorry, I’m confused … it’s not two separate tests per box?

It is but they recommend you do both tests, with time in between, to guard against false positives/negatives.

We instead do one test and then a PCR. Because the PCR is very accurate. And if you get one positive and one negative antigen test, you will have to do a PCR anyway.

Anonymous wrote:The binax now tests should be used together. One box = two swabs = one round of testing.

Sorry, I’m confused … it’s not two separate tests per box?

Anonymous wrote:The binax now tests should be used together. One box = two swabs = one round of testing.

That’s what binax recommends when using it instead of a PCR test. But you could do an antigen test to find out if someone is contagious now (in order to make faster choices about quarantines and community alerts) but then immediately do a PCR test to confirm. The antigen test is just used to give you better information to work off until you can get the PCR results, which are dependent on lab turn around times.

The binax now tests should be used together. One box = two swabs = one round of testing.

Parents at our school used it to figure out teacher assignments before they were announced, because they listed the room numbers in Aspen over the summer. Didn’t really realize it existed before then.

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Anonymous wrote: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.

I agree that this is likely the reason for the amount of time it takes to notify parents of a case.

Yes, every time we get one of these notices it says something like "those in the affected classrooms who need to quarantine have been notified already"

At least at Janney, close contacts have been notified the afternoon of the community announcement, which comes in the evening. Has so far always been the same day.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

I agree that this is likely the reason for the amount of time it takes to notify parents of a case.

Yes, every time we get one of these notices it says something like "those in the affected classrooms who need to quarantine have been notified already"

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Anonymous wrote:Positive case at SWS

Now up to two.

Really? I've only gotten a notification about one case.

A notification went out last night and a second one today around 11:30.

Weird. I only have the 9/13 message

The second email was sent from a different account. But I think it’s the same one case. “A person last at the school on September 10.” (Though it’s only a matter of time before there are many more.)

The notice has a different date.

It is the same case

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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.

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).