Niagara Falls, NY (WBEN) - As school districts inside Erie County's 'Yellow Cluster Zone' try to figure out if they will be able to continue in-class learning with the new restrictions, school leaders outside the district are taking notice and preparing.
Though the restrictions imposed by New York do not explicitly force schools to end in-person learning, the cost associated with implementing the required testing - 20% of all in-person students and staff must be tested on a weekly basis - in Yellow cluster zone designations may prohibit schools from allowing any students in the building.
"The tests will be provided by the state, that's what we've been told," said Ken-Ton Schools Superintendent Sabatino Cimato during a school board meeting Tuesday night. "The school districts are going to be responsible for the personnel and the cost of testing itself... Early estimates are it would cost about $10,000 a week in order to get this done."
"That seems right on," said Niagara Falls School Superintendent Mark Laurrie, who has created a testing site in the district. "We're spending on average about $72,000 a month."
"It's absolutely unsustainable to deliver an in-person program and to spend that much money every month on COVID related expenses," Laurrie said. "Going in to a Yellow zone will really be detrimental to any school district. I don't see how they can keep in-person learning going just with the cost and the supply chain of tests."
Aside from the cost of implementing tests, current testing capabilities would likely not allow schools to get the number of tests necessary to meet the state's requirement.
On Tuesday WBEN published a story asking why schools were the first to shut down under the state's new guidelines, citing infectious disease doctors who supported getting children in school and called the state's sequence of restrictions 'arbitrary.' A spokesperson for Governor Cuomo reached out to WBEN, saying that schools do not need to close indefinitely, but need to fulfill the testing requirements, which in Orange and Red zones changes to testing all returning staff and students, and only allow them to attend in-person classes after they receive a negative test, and testing 25% of staff and students weekly.
Though technically schools aren't being forced to close, the things school districts and private schools are forced to do may make it impossible to open.
"That's the reality of it," said Laurrie. "From a supply perspective, a cost perspective, a staff perspective to administer that many tests. The likelihood of having no positives when you're testing that many is really very unlikely. You put all those factors together and you lead to schools shutting down."
Still, schools have not proven to be effective sources of spreading the virus. Laurrie said that across schools in Niagara County schools the infection rate is much lower than it is in the general public. Children also continue to be minimally impacted by the virus.
"This virus is not attacking our kids in the way that the flu or other RSV viruses do," said Allegra Jaros, President of Oishei Children's Hospital. "We have seen a bit of an uptick over the past few weeks, but the admissions are still very low, less than a handful in the past few weeks."
"It really does bother me," Laurrie said about schools facing more stringent requirements to stay open than many businesses. "The strain on instruction, mental health, and all of the supports a school brings to a young child... we're headed toward a new pandemic, and that's a learning loss pandemic. We can't sustain this hybrid or remote model much longer in order to stop that second pandemic."
