FRANKLIN, Mass. — The National Guard, the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency and state education leaders were on hand Saturday to begin distributing rapid COVID-19 test kits to school districts across Massachusetts.
The distribution will continue Sunday as most school districts head back to school Monday after winter break.
“I think we’re one of the few states in the whole country that’s been able to supply both masks and test kits in advance of returning back to school,” said Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education Jeffrey Riley. “I just really appreciate all the hard work that’s been done so we can have a good result for our kids.”
The test kits arrived in Franklin late Friday after an initial delay, which the state attributed to national shipping issues.
The Massachusetts Teachers Association then called on the state to cancel school Monday.
“Using Monday as a day for testing and analyzing data will allow our school districts to make prudent decisions around staffing needs so they can continue in-person learning for students if it is safe or develop contingency plans if a district deems it to be necessary,” said MTA President Merrie Najimy.
DESE rejected this idea.”[Testing] is a not a requirement for teachers to return to work, or necessary to reopen schools after the holiday break,” said spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Education Colleen Quinn. “It is disappointing that once again the MTA is trying to find a way to close schools, which we know is to the extreme detriment of our children.”
Even still, several school districts have taken it upon themselves to cancel school Monday, including Burlington and Lexington.
The interim superintendent of Cambridge Public Schools announced a two-day delay, with students returning to school on Wednesday.
“One of a superintendent’s least favorite decisions is to have to close schools for any reason – snow, pandemic, it doesn’t matter, we don’t like to do it,” interim Superintendent Victoria Greer told Boston 25 News. “After we realized how long the lab would possibly need to have to run the tests, we knew that we needed to do a two-day delay.”
In addition to distributing the state-supplied rapid COVID tests to teachers and staff, Cambridge is also hoping to test all students for COVID before returning to the classroom.
The city is transforming four schools into PCR testing sites Monday for students.
“Some of the challenges we have for the weekend is number one, it is the holiday season,” said Greer. “Our staff are not required to work, our nursing staff is not required to work [on weekends]. There’s a lot of logistics I go into these decisions, and there’s no way for us to please everyone in our decision making.”
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