Newton Parents Ask For Coronavirus Testing At Schools

NEWTON, MA — A group of parents pushing to get students back in school say Newton Public Schools should follow the lead of neighboring communities like Wellesley and perform random coronavirus tests on students and faculty to help prevent a potential "silent" outbreak and build confidence in a return to school.

The group, dubbed the “Safer Teachers, Safer Students” collaborative, formed during the summer when parents like Kristin Ardlie, a scientist at the Broad Institute — a biomedical and genomic research center in Cambridge working on pandemic response and coronavirus tests — realized they were creating COVID-19 virus tests for colleges and taking weekly tests themselves but none had been discussed for their children in public schools. The researchers and scientists started reaching out to their school districts in places like Wellesley, Watertown and Cambridge. As they did, physicians and other researchers joined the cause.

In August when Newton abruptly changed plans from starting the school year as a hybrid model to fully online, despite overwhelming support for the hybrid model among families, the research scientists who happened to have children in the Newton Public Schools took note. A dozen Newton parents who were also MDs or PHDs signed a letter. It outlined why testing would be important in Newton.

"Our sense was that by testing, we could sort of prove, in a way, that the public health measures everyone has been working to put in place actually do work and prevent the spread of the virus, especially to the teachers," said Pheobe Olhava a physician and mother of two in Newton Public Schools who joined the group when she saw a friend bring testing to the private school their child attended.

The Newton group of about 15 reached out to the district, the school committee and the superintendent to polite, but little, response, they said.

So, the collaborative struck out on their own with a survey modeled on the one parents sent out in neighboring Wellesley, which is in the process of a three month pilot program with testing.

Wellesley Public Schools completed a baseline, voluntary testing of its teachers and students before returning to in-person learning on Oct. 1 and plans to continue testing of staff for about 12 weeks. Watertown also began voluntary testing its staff, which it plans to continue weekly.

Unlike in Wellesley, the Newton School district did not agree to send the survey districtwide, so the group reached out to every parent with a child in the Newton public schools that they could find, using PTO lists and social media and email.

The survey got responses from 1,244 Newton families. The collaborative asked them to rate their comfort levels about sending their children back to school and whether their comfort levels would change if testing was added as an extra safety measure.

According to the collaborative, most parents responded that they were only “somewhat comfortable” with current safety measures. That number increased three-fold to “very comfortable” if surveillance testing was added to existing safety measures, they said.

The collaborative said of the families who responded to their survey, 85 percent indicated they initially chose the hybrid model for their children, 12 percent said they would prefer to start the year remote, and 3 percent chose a combination of hybrid and remote.

Of those who chose remote learning (or a remote-hybrid combination), two thirds said that their enrollment preference would have changed to hybrid if testing was in place, according to the group.
“95 percent of the 1,244 families responding supported surveillance testing as a back-to-school measure complementing the public health measures in place,” according to the Olhava.

One hurdle for the group is the fact that health and human services, the CDC and DESE do not require testing.

"We really look to them to guide us on protocol around COVID and especially on surveillance testing," said School Committee Chair Ruth Goldman. "They did not advise that surveillance testing was necessary to safely open our schools. They really really emphasize masks, sanitation (personal and building) and social distancing as the pillars of school safety."

Testing requires additional time, planning and infrastructure. School officials said any undertaking would have to partner with health and human services or a hospital.

And then there's funding.

The group’s proposed efforts do not have state funding. In Wellesley an educational non profit has been raising funds for its program. The group's survey asked parents if they would donate, and a “significant number” indicated a generous willingness to donate to cover the costs of a pilot study, Olhava said.

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