Testing students for COVID-19 might mean shorter quarantines.

But, if Warren County School District can take that step, why not go farther

During the school board’s committee meetings Monday night, Superintendent Amy Stewart said there have been more than 75 percent as many quarantine days two months into this school year as there were in all of the previous year – 364 to 436.

Committees discussed a number of possible ways to address make sure students are learning everything they need to learn, even when they are out of school.

They also focused on ways to eliminate some of the days and keep students in the classrooms.

“I want to reduce the number of kids that we deny entry to to the greatest extent possible,” board member Joe Colosimo said. “We want them in school.”

“Some districts are starting to look at the use of COVID testing as a strategy to try to keep more kids in school,” Stewart said. “We know what the conversation looks like when we talk about masks. We know what the conversation looks like when we talk about vaccination… It is another angle to look at in terms of lost instruction.”

She stressed that testing would not be required nor done without consent.

Some board members were interested in mre information.

“I think the testing route… if we can get some clear guidance… would be the way to go,” board member Marcy Morgan said. “You can have the illness and not show any symptoms. The test would be the answer if we could figure out a shortened version.”

Stewart said the district would have to arrange for a large number of rapid tests.

Board member Arthur Stewart said such a change would go against the quarantine matrix under which the district is already operating.

“Testing doesn’t help us, at least on this protocol, for the unvaccinated masked students,” Arthur Stewart said, citing the matrix for determining which students have to quarantine after a close contact and which do not. “The option of testing unvaccinated, masked students, and letting them stay in school, is not part of the guidance.”

“If we’re going to do that, we’re making it up from whole cloth,” he said. “If we’re going to make that up from whole cloth… why don’t we go back to temperature tests as the most likely symptom?”

“If we’re going to deviate from the guidance… let’s keep sick kids out of school,” he said.

Amy Stewart said the most common symptoms are no longer the fever cited early in the pandemic.

Arthur Stewart was amenable to a check of other symptoms. “Why don’t you do a checklist of symptoms?” he said. “Keep those kids out of school.”

He asked for a motion to be added to the agenda for the Nov. 8 board meeting.

“For both vaccinated and unvaccinated masked students, we would not deny entry for the 10 day period, if they, in the morning, pass a symptoms test – those symptoms the administration would recommend,” Arthur Stewart said. “Clearly we’re open to walking away from some guidance. We continue to do contact tracing and that we inform students of close contact so if they want to act on that, they have the benefit of the information.”