“Is important to remember that most schools in Virginia were opening their doors to students for the first in a year or more,” Forlano said. “Most school divisions, understandably, were focused mostly on simply operating … on safely getting to the end of the school year.”
With the stakes now changed, interest has picked up.
About a quarter of intent forms were submitted to the health agency in the past two weeks, months after the initial July 15 deadline. It’s not enough to include the majority of public schools.
Districts that remain skeptical of the undertaking, such as Chesterfield County Public Schools, continue to cite staffing capacity – which has hemorrhaged throughout the pandemic – as a hindrance to successfully implementing routine testing.
In a school board meeting last Tuesday, Chesterfield County Public Schools’ superintendent Merv Daugherty said that the state may have the money to add positions, but “there aren’t enough people in the system to hire.”
“We cannot ask our nurses to do any more,” Daugherty said. “They’re working overtime. There’s money out there from the federal government for testing, but there aren’t people to do the testing.”
Chesterfield County Public Schools was among the first in the state to release a public dashboard outlining the percentage of students and staff who have tested positive in the past week and how many are quarantined. While the positivity rate remains well below 1% for students and staff, figures depend on whether people get tested and also tell the school system.
