by Dani Heller
The district has launched a surveillance COVID testing initiative this past week. The initiative is meant to ensure that the school year can continue to run safely. The school has partnered with Westchester Medical Center to provide a self administered saliva-based PCR test to students that have volunteered to take part in this testing.
After the initial administration of this testing, there seems to be some details that still need to be ironed out. Multiple times throughout the first day of the initiative (October 14th), a long list of students were called down to the office to sign up for what period they wanted to administer their test. These announcements created frequent interruption during classes, and resulted in lines of students in the main office as well as in the CPR room, where the testing took place.
Overall, the main intent of this initiative was to promote a safe environment for all students and staff. This ultimate goal was successful, as over 500 student and staff members across the district were testing, and all of tests came back negative for the coronavirus. The second round of this testing will take place on Thursday, October 21st. Going forward, approximately 30 high school students selected at random will participate in this testing.
Student feedback about the testing seems to be positive, especially when compared to last year’s testing procedure. Senior Hannah Tuckett said, “I had to wait in a short line while waiting to get tested, but overall the process seemed to run smoothly. I think implementing this testing method is a great way to continue to ensure safety in school.”
