OVERVIEW

Massachusetts' Department of Elementary and Secondary Education ("DESE") highly encourages Districts and schools to maintain or establish a robust plan for COVID-19 testing in schools, including both diagnostic testing and screening (pooled) testing for students and staff in their Fall 2021 guidance.

The Wayland School Committee has approved a variety of COVID-19 safety testing programs for the 2021-22 school year to keep students safe and in school. We are strongly encouraging all students to participate in safety testing programs this year, even if they are fully vaccinated. State and federal funding will allow us to offer all testing for free. We will continue to work with our prior COVID-19 testing partner, CIC Health who uses the Broad Institute Lab at MIT and Harvard. The available testing options include:

POOLED TESTING

Weekly safety checks minimize disruption to learning by helping us catch potential spread of the virus before it starts. Each Thursday, participating students and staff provide two samples with a shallow nasal swab at school. The first is used to conduct a pooled test, typically a consistent group of 5-10 individuals. In an improvement over last school year, if a pool has a positive result, the second individual sample is used to determine who is positive. No one needs to drive back to school to be retested or quarantine until they do! CIC expects to have both pooled and individual results within 24 hours.

TEST AND STAY

For Unvaccinated Individuals:

The new “test and stay” program allows unvaccinated, asymptomatic students who are identified as close contacts to be tested at school daily for at least 5 continuous days and stay in school as long as their results are negative and they remain asymptomatic. We will use Abbott BinaxNOW tests which return results in 15 minutes. Alternatively, unvaccinated close contacts need to quarantine.

For Vaccinated Individuals:

As a reminder, students who are identified as close contacts but are fully vaccinated and asymptomatic are not currently required to quarantine or test, per DESE and DPH guidelines. However, WPS will offer the Abbott BinaxNOW test to vaccinated close contacts through the test and stay program if you wish to have easy access to COVID-19 testing.

SYMPTOMATIC TESTING

If a student begins displaying COVID-19 like symptoms at school, we can administer the Abbott BinaxNOW test, which returns results in 15 minutes, to determine if it is COVID-19. If the student has minimal symptoms and tests negative, this would allow them to remain in school until the end of the day, as opposed to needing to be picked up immediately by a parent or guardian. One important point to emphasize: students who are symptomatic should not be coming to school. Instead, symptomatic testing is intended to address situations in which a student begins to show symptoms after they have already arrived at school.

REGISTER NOW in two easy steps:

1. GIVE CONSENT TO PARTICIPATE

• Individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 90 days cannot participate

• Individuals who have received the COVID-19 vaccine may still participate

• There is no fee to families to participate in the testing program

• Deadline for enrollment is TBD, but consent ASAP to participate

• Individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 90 days cannot participate

• Individuals who have received the COVID-19 vaccine may still participate

• There is no fee to families to participate in the testing program

• Deadline for enrollment is TBD, but consent ASAP to participate

FURTHER DETAILS

Detailed information about testing options, our vendor and helpful videos are available in the

LEARN MORE and FAQ tabs.