Similar to what is happening at Naperville School District 203, Indian Prairie School District 204 has been “exploring” a pilot test-to-stay program through which students exposed to COVID-19 but not infected could stay in school, Superintendent Adrian Talley said.
Speaking at this week’s school board meeting, Talley said if they proceeded, the program would be tried in a small number of schools and the results evaluated before moving to a larger rollout. “That exploration has continued, and we are closer to establishing a test-to-stay option,” Talley said.
Under the proposed program, students and staff who have been in close contact with someone infected with COVID would be allowed to stay in school but required to be tested on the first, third, fifth and seventh days after the exposure.
If a test comes back positive, the person would be required to go home and quarantine.
The Illinois State Board of Education and Illinois Department of Public Health say test-to-stay is an acceptable option for school districts, but the DuPage County Health Department has advised against it. County officials have said they won’t support something that doesn’t have CDC backing and they are concerned that districts would have too much leeway in how they enforce the rules.
Talley said Indian Prairie’s positivity rate had dropped below 2.2% as of Monday, the night on which the board met. But the district’s new-cases-per-100,000 count was at 100 at the start of this week, which is still classified as high, he said.
“(The positivity rate) does not mean we are out of the woods, but it means things are moving in the right direction and we hope this trend continues,” Talley said.
While District 204 numbers were not available, District 203 officials have said that of the 1,992 students forced to quarantine because because of exposure to someone with coronavirus or having COVID-like symptoms in the first month of school, only 98 were found to have the virus.