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player ready...West Aurora School District 129 will offer free rapid COVID-19 testing at school on a voluntary basis to students who are showing symptoms of the virus as it prepares to return to five days of in-person learning a week.
The testing plan comes as West Aurora increases in-person learning to five days a week at all levels beginning April 7 in the wake of new guidance issued by the Illinois Department of Public Health which reduced social distancing guidelines from six feet to three feet.
The five days of in-person learning will affect students whose families opted for the blended learning plan at the elementary, middle school and high school levels as well as for the Early Learning Academy, district officials said.
Masks will still be required and protocols for cleaning buildings will still be followed under the state’s new rules, district officials said.
West Aurora Assistant Superintendent of Operations Angie Smith said the rapid COVID-19 tests will be administered to students by the district’s trained nursing staff.
The district has worked closely with state and local health departments in order to provide the tests for students who become symptomatic while in school, she said.
“Tests will only be performed on students who become symptomatic during the school day and only with parental consent,” Smith said in a response to questions from The Beacon-News.
The West Aurora School Board recently received information about how the district’s trained nursing staff will perform the tests.
“We’re not going to become the outlet mall where everyone comes to us. If a student or staff member becomes symptomatic during the day, we will be able to provide testing,” Smith said.
The rapid COVID-19 tests take about 15 minutes to get results.
“The test itself is not as invasive as we saw in the past. It’s really a rather quick swab in the nose,” Smith said.
Families will receive results of the tests.
The in-school rapid COVID-19 tests will save families from having to make a visit to the doctor’s office or an outside testing site, Smith said.
The tests will also be beneficial to the school environment, she said.
“We are providing the tests because it lets us more quickly identify a positive case which will become more important with our move to having more students in buildings,” Smith said.
The rapid COVID-19 tests will be beneficial for those who test negative as well, she said, as siblings will not have to be sent home as in the past.
“A negative test will help as we will no longer need to exclude the siblings of a symptomatic student if the test result is negative. The symptomatic student will still need to go home until symptoms stop or there is another diagnosis, but their siblings can stay if their test is negative,” Smith said.
The idea of in-house COVID-19 tests for students was previously discussed. However, the tests had been “incredibly expensive” and the district had to develop a method to administer them, she said.
The tests are being provided free of charge to the district through the state of Illinois, Smith said.
Families were sent waiver forms to grant the district permission to provide the test to individual students.
If parents do not submit the waivers, officials will have to contact the parents or guardians if a student goes to the school office with symptoms in order to get permission to provide the test.
“We view this as one more way for us to help prevent community spread,” Smith said of the testing program. “Although the vast majority of our staff is vaccinated, students are not and we want to do all we can to keep them in school.”
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More than 1,400 staff members in West Aurora School District – approximately 85% – have received a second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, West Aurora School District Superintendent Jeff Craig said.
“We will continue with our cleaning practices,” Craig said. “We will not let down our guard. We will continue our practice of appropriate PPE use, frequent hand washing and contact tracing and we will maintain our social distancing.”
Families with questions about the testing program can contact West Aurora Director of Student Services Marti Neahring by emailing [email protected].
Linda Girardi is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.