They won’t need to test every single person, just enough to justify closing.

Teachers must test on Monday. If “too many” are positive, they will likely close individual classes, grades, or schools. Knowing how many teachers are available will tell them how many students they can handle…

Then on Tuesday, they’ll look at the student population submissions. If they have enough negative-tested kids AND enough negative-tested teachers, they’ll start mixing and matching and building temporary classroom groups. They will also know the ratio of tested to untested students and the ratio of positive to negative within the tested population. From this they can extrapolate and estimate the whole population ratio.

By the Tuesday deadline, they’ll know if they’ll have enough teachers to handle admitting the estimated number of students who will test negative at the door, and be able to print out the “admit” and “deny entry” lists for Wednesday morning, as well as classroom assignments.

They probably have some threshold they’ll use to declare defeat and just cancel school. If they do actually hold school on Wednesday, all the non-tested students will be denied entry and have their parents called or texted (the night before or when they arrive). If an unescorted student shows up at school untested, the parents can be called to come (back) to the school, fetch their kid and a test kit and upload their results or present them or just say it was negative.

Also, and here’s the fun part, the rapid tests miss about half of the positive specimens. So for each student who is identified as positive and told to stay home there is another positive student whose test reports negative and who gets admitted.

Source: informed speculation

i’m a teacher and a NP. I worry that the FdA is saying the antigen tests aren’t as sensitive to detecting Omicron. so we will still see spread. i’ll take my test and give my daughters theirs, but am worried. i don't want to go back to virtual. I’m ready if I have to, but don’t want that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who at each school is checking the database?
It would be great if all those "central office" policy makers showed up at schools to check kids in. But my guess is that they just said "everyone needs a negative test to come back to school" and then put up their "out of office" email and left for break.
So tired of people who never worked in an actual school making all these decisions for us.
What an impending disaster.
-Special Ed teacher

The same people who check the Shield T3 test results (at my school, that’s the principal and AP.) And everyone flags a positive case which would also, I assume, be the case here. I truly don’t understand why some people on this board are making it sound like such a crazy difficult plan. And you’d really prefer we didn’t do ANY testing so everyone can merrily spread Covid and … what? What’s the benefit to that? I want my kid at school on Wednesday so I’m hauling my ass down to his school to pick up a testing kit and then I’m going to test him on Tuesday 🤷‍♀️

+1

Yes DCPS is a s*** show of planning

But the folks who write anything on DCUM have access to their school to get the test and upload to a website.

Is the “outrage” that pos kids will sit next to your DC or that you are worried poor/non native students will be turned away? We know most of you are in ward 3 so the must see grandma in aspen folks can have the nanny watch jr if they are pos.

I’m sure DCPS has kicked the how to screen kids into school down to the schools so our hard working administrators get to worry about what to do on their break and then come back Monday morning and implement a plan in 48 hours (while managing their kids at home, screening teachers etc)

To be fair to DCPS they couldn’t have planned for omnicron in November because a) it didn’t exist and b) all variants were covered by the vaccine and c) kids were being vaccinated

DCPS and WTU clearly aren’t pushing for virtual so find another think to moan and groan about. I’ve spoken to 5 different teachers over the break (not all DCPS) and they are dreading the return to virtual.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who at each school is checking the database?
It would be great if all those "central office" policy makers showed up at schools to check kids in. But my guess is that they just said "everyone needs a negative test to come back to school" and then put up their "out of office" email and left for break.
So tired of people who never worked in an actual school making all these decisions for us.
What an impending disaster.
-Special Ed teacher

The same people who check the Shield T3 test results (at my school, that’s the principal and AP.) And everyone flags a positive case which would also, I assume, be the case here. I truly don’t understand why some people on this board are making it sound like such a crazy difficult plan. And you’d really prefer we didn’t do ANY testing so everyone can merrily spread Covid and … what? What’s the benefit to that? I want my kid at school on Wednesday so I’m hauling my ass down to his school to pick up a testing kit and then I’m going to test him on Tuesday 🤷‍♀️

I think testing is a great idea and I am glad the plan is in place. And I am an NP but if you met the AP at my school in charge of Covid response you would just shrug your shoulders and realize no one is checking for negative tests. I’m fine with that because my principal seems to be okay with the incompetence so what can I do?

Anonymous wrote:Who at each school is checking the database?
It would be great if all those "central office" policy makers showed up at schools to check kids in. But my guess is that they just said "everyone needs a negative test to come back to school" and then put up their "out of office" email and left for break.
So tired of people who never worked in an actual school making all these decisions for us.
What an impending disaster.
-Special Ed teacher

The same people who check the Shield T3 test results (at my school, that’s the principal and AP.) And everyone flags a positive case which would also, I assume, be the case here. I truly don’t understand why some people on this board are making it sound like such a crazy difficult plan. And you’d really prefer we didn’t do ANY testing so everyone can merrily spread Covid and … what? What’s the benefit to that? I want my kid at school on Wednesday so I’m hauling my ass down to his school to pick up a testing kit and then I’m going to test him on Tuesday 🤷‍♀️

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who at each school is checking the database?
It would be great if all those "central office" policy makers showed up at schools to check kids in. But my guess is that they just said "everyone needs a negative test to come back to school" and then put up their "out of office" email and left for break.
So tired of people who never worked in an actual school making all these decisions for us.
What an impending disaster.
-Special Ed teacher

What do you suggest pp? We don’t test because it’s too hard?

Np. Yep, that’s what I would like to see happen!

Fortunately, that’s not happening!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who at each school is checking the database?
It would be great if all those "central office" policy makers showed up at schools to check kids in. But my guess is that they just said "everyone needs a negative test to come back to school" and then put up their "out of office" email and left for break.
So tired of people who never worked in an actual school making all these decisions for us.
What an impending disaster.
-Special Ed teacher

What do you suggest pp? We don’t test because it’s too hard?

Np. Yep, that’s what I would like to see happen!

Anonymous wrote:Who at each school is checking the database?
It would be great if all those "central office" policy makers showed up at schools to check kids in. But my guess is that they just said "everyone needs a negative test to come back to school" and then put up their "out of office" email and left for break.
So tired of people who never worked in an actual school making all these decisions for us.
What an impending disaster.
-Special Ed teacher

What do you suggest pp? We don’t test because it’s too hard?

Who at each school is checking the database?
It would be great if all those "central office" policy makers showed up at schools to check kids in. But my guess is that they just said "everyone needs a negative test to come back to school" and then put up their "out of office" email and left for break.
So tired of people who never worked in an actual school making all these decisions for us.
What an impending disaster.
-Special Ed teacher

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why can't they test at school? I'm in a position to test my kids and upload, but I am sure many families are not.

Stop being lazy. Because its a lot of class time, and kids have to take off masks to do it.

It would be a massive super spreader event. That’s why.

+1

And I am not sticking q-tips up all of my students’ noses and trying to keep track of each rapid test result for 24 students. Parents or some sort of Covid response person or medical professional can handle that one.

😂

What exactly do parents enter on the website?
How do we know people are actually testing their kids and not just checking "negative" and sending their kid to school?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why can't they test at school? I'm in a position to test my kids and upload, but I am sure many families are not.

Stop being lazy. Because its a lot of class time, and kids have to take off masks to do it.

It would be a massive super spreader event. That’s why.

+1

And I am not sticking q-tips up all of my students’ noses and trying to keep track of each rapid test result for 24 students. Parents or some sort of Covid response person or medical professional can handle that one.

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why DCPS is not following CDC's guidelines for a 5 day isolation period. Anyone have an explanation? They believe they have better data?? Did DCPS or WTU decide not to follow CDC guidelines at some point? I'm genuinely curious how they are rationalizing keeping the 10 day isolation period when that has changed.

I thought the DC Health guy said they changed it? Is DCPS not following?

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why DCPS is not following CDC's guidelines for a 5 day isolation period. Anyone have an explanation? They believe they have better data?? Did DCPS or WTU decide not to follow CDC guidelines at some point? I'm genuinely curious how they are rationalizing keeping the 10 day isolation period when that has changed.

They addressed it in the press conference and said while the official policy is still being updated they do plan to change the guidelines to follow the CDC. Bureaucracy takes a bit of time to catch up. I’m not a DCPS fanatic by any means but they did address this in a reasonable manner in the press conference.

I don't understand why DCPS is not following CDC's guidelines for a 5 day isolation period. Anyone have an explanation? They believe they have better data?? Did DCPS or WTU decide not to follow CDC guidelines at some point? I'm genuinely curious how they are rationalizing keeping the 10 day isolation period when that has changed.