Buffalo, NY (WBEN) Help from New York State and Erie County to get schools to test students for Coronavirus and reopen faster may help some schools. But at one school, testing has already begun.
St. Joe's President Chris Fulco tells WBEN the state's changes won't have an impact because the school's COVID response team scrambled to test 100 percent of its faculty, students and staff over three days this week. "We'll be wrapping up our testing Wednesday and reopening on Thursday," says Fulco.
Fulco says St. Joe's was able to partner with the Visiting Nurses Association to set up a limited service lab on campus.
In an orange zone, schools were required to test every single student and staff member who wanted to return to in-person learning, and then test 20% of students and staff every week. Now, the state is easing the testing requirement so that schools in the orange zone must test 20% of in person students and staff every month. Red zone schools must test 30% every month. Schools can also conduct pool testing.
Fulco says he appreciates the easing of testing mandates as it will help St. Joe's move forward to continue the testing process without interfering with the educational process, but it won't affect reopening on Thursday.
Erie County also announced it would allow schools to use the health department's Limited Service Lab license to schools within the state's designated micro-cluster zones.
"For many schools, it's been frustrating the last two plus weeks not having the assistance of the county with the testing mandate when there are other counties where schools are greatly assisted," notes Fulco. "The schools that will really benefit are the schools that have not made any progress in applying for their own license or partnering with an outside organization and using that license."
The eased state regulations and county assistance will be helpful to West Buffalo Charter school, said School Leader Andrea Todoro. "The new guidelines are more feasible and less cumbersome, especially a school of our size that is trying to figure out all of the logistics and best use its manpower to follow the old guidelines," said Todoro. "The new guidelines are definitely more relaxed and something we deemed significantly easier to implement and now just getting the ball rolling to get our own license."
Todoro says the county's help is too late for her school because it's already sought its own license for testing.
"I do understand how for other schools this can be helpful to have that license number to obtain testing."
West Buffalo Charter School has 533 students, and 46 percent chose the fully remote option at the start of the school year.
But Todoro says one thing that's impeding the opening timeline is the positivity rate.
"I don't want to bring people back too soon in an environment where we had a relatively low transmission rate within the school, and everyone's been talking about the spread that wasn't necessarily happening within the building. We're very fearful of inviting the virus into our building through staff or people who have been with others during the holiday season, so that's something we're considering right now as to how long we want to put a pause to in-person instruction."
She said once there's a timeline, it will come down to training staff and everything set up which she says can be done rather quickly.
