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Communication in Aptosand Covid Testing, Q&A With Dr. Michelle
FEATURED COLUMNIST Communication in Aptos and Covid Testing
Q&A With Dr. Michelle Rodriguez, Superintendent, Pajaro Valley Unified School District
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23% of my class has been out on 10-day isolation for symptoms in the first 17 days of school this year. (I teach in elementary.) As far as I know none of these students opted to take a Covid test. It seems families are choosing the 10-day isolation instead of a test and the possibility of returning to school sooner. Can students be required to test if symptoms are present? Can the district require students (and unvaccinated staff) to surveillance test each week?
We have found it has been difficult for both our symptomatic students and staff to receive a timely PCR result from their medical provider.
As we have implemented the student antigen testing for modified quarantine, we have found that the grand majority of parents wanted their child to engage in the testing so their child could return to the classroom upon a negative test. Therefore, we do not believe that parents are opting out of testing but rather they are finding it challenging to find a testing location.
This week, we opened our PVUSD location at the District Office where students and staff, free of charge, can get a PCR test result returned within 24-hours, no appointment necessary.
Both symptomatic and asymptomatic students and staff may go to these locations for testing. All PVUSD staff should refer their students in need of testing to these locations.
The sites are located at: • PVUSD District Office parking lot, available from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mondays,
Wednesday, and Fridays. • Cabrillo College in Aptos, Parking Lot
K, from 3- 6 p.m. Monday-Friday and 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday.
Beginning on Oct. 15, any staff member who has not provided proof of vaccination status will be required to test weekly at their site through Inspire Diagnostics.
Will asymptomatic students have the opportunity to participate in weekly COVID testing? Santa Cruz City School District has made testing very easy for all students, and I hope our students will be able to receive similar services.
We have already begun our collaboration with Inspire Diagnostics.
We currently have our symptomatic testing site at the District Office as noted in the question above and student and staff testing at both WHS and PVHS.
In the following weeks, we will expand Inspire Diagnostics testing in the following order: Aptos High School, remaining secondary sites, and elementary sites with the goal of site-level testing for asymptomatic students and staff being up and running across the District by early October. All students who have a consent completed will be tested once a week.
Students who are exposed to a positive case will be tested a second time that week. As we continue the rollout with Inspire Diagnostics, we will continue with student antigen testing for modified quarantine and staff can engage in surveillance testing at the five existing District locations: District Office, PVHS, Ohlone, EA Hall and AHS.
Can you please clarify what type of Covid test is need for a student to return to school if they start having symptoms? At my child’s school the PCR test is the only one being accepted, not the rapid test.
All COVID-19 test results must be laboratory certified from a medical provider or done by a trained staff member. Therefore, you may submit a PCR test result from your medical provider or PVUSD’s new symptomatic Inspire Diagnostic testing center.
We can accept an antigen test as long as the results are provided by a certified laboratory. We cannot accept a rapid home test, as we cannot verify who took the test and when it was given.
Do students have to have the
Covid-19 vaccine to be in school? Also do schools have the right to ask students if they have the vaccine?
We do not require students to have received the COVID-19 vaccination to attend school. We are asking parents to provide us vaccination information as, per California Department of Public Health guidelines, vaccinated students do not have to quarantine after an exposure if they remain asymptomatic.
Several weeks ago, parents received a letter from their school asking them to provide vaccination information for students over the age of 12 and the permission to test if there was an exposure within the classroom.
This information will help facilitate the modified quarantine process when we have a positive case in a classroom.
I reached out to my school’s principal like you said to come up with another solution to keep my child at their current school, other than virtual academy or in-person, she said unfortunately there’s not any other options! Why don’t you allow students & parents to continue with the virtual Zoom classes?
The statewide focus this year is to ensure that all school districts provide full-day, in-person learning.
We have found that with all of the current mitigation strategies in place, we are able to highly limit in school transmission. In all of the positive student cases, we have only had one case of student transmission that occurred through athletics.
Apart from being required to provide in-person learning, we believe we can safely continue with in-person learning. Therefore, all of our teaching resources are allocated to either in-person learning, Pacific Coast Charter School or the Virtual Academy.
We are not able to spread our resources to provide the families who wish to have the daily distance learning as we had last year.
Will seniors who attend Virtual Academy/
Independent Studies have the option to graduate with their former high school?
This past year, Virtual Academy students were able to participate in both graduations. The same will be true for this year as well.
The lockdown at AHS was announced to students at 2:29 p.m. Parents were alerted by the district at 3:35 p.m, over 40 minutes after school ended. In the press conference the principle said parents were notified asap. How is 66 minutes asap?
The sheriffs department and KSBW had reported the lockdown before PVUSD announced it to parents. Please explain to the community what went wrong with your communication and what steps you are taking to resolve this issue. Please don’t justify this error in communication or spin it, be honest with the community and take active steps to make improvements.
During an incident, the first priority must be to secure the students and staff safety. After the situation is stabilized, we begin the communication with families.
As noted during the two community forums, the initial communication was provided promptly to parents at 2:49 p.m. It was not until we heard concernsraised by parents that we reviewed the system to find that the original message intended to go to all was not received by the majority of the parents.
Below you will see a timeline of that communication. To ensure that all call messages are properly received during future incidents, staff will work in teams to post and verify messaging to families.
Why are parents now required to be vaccinated to help chaperone for field trips for our kids’ school? Why can’t we instead show proof of one or two negative tests during that week in order to chaperone?
We appreciate the engagement of our parents and understand the tremendous value that you bring to the classroom and school site.
Currently, we are following CDPH guidelines on volunteers, which notes we should limit nonessential visitors.
