More Covid - Test to Stay (updated in op)

[moonpie]

We were notified that DD was a close contact at school. Our options are to:
a. Keep her home for the 10 day quarantine period. The only alternative learning provided is a homework packet.
b. Participate in the school’s test to stay program. Kids receive a rapid test by the school on day 1,2,3,4,5,7,9 of exposure. If the test is negative they can go to class. If they are positive they go home with the parent. She will not be able to go to before/after care.

Is anyone’s school doing test to stay? Is it working? My biggest concern is that she is further exposed to participating children that do go on to test positive for covid. Or that she will be exposed to kids who were not considered a close contact so did not need to get tested, since covid is now in the classroom. A close contact is 3 feet for 15 mins or more here.

Also, the positive person was coughing all last week and DD is desk partners (why!?!!) with her. They do wear masks but they eat at their desks. If this information changes any minds, lol.

Update: I thought I would post an update for those that like data. Five kids were quarantined, including the positive child. Of the four close contacts, one child tested positive the same day we were notified. The three remaining children all chose to do test to stay and all tests came back negative for them. There were no positive cases discovered outside of the pod/quarantined kids. Dd is done with testing and we are glad that it’s behind us! Fingers crossed that it does not happen again before she is able to be vaccinated.

[ECB]

I would want to do the test to stay so that my son is in school, BUT I would want some measures to be taken to keep him away from the positive child, or ANY child who is coughing. I mean.... if you want to spread a virus, coughing is going to do it.

[noodleoo]

Our school is doing the test to stay program and I consented to participate for DD1 (age 6, first grade). She was a close contact several time last year and never tested positive, but she had to quarantine each time and missed a ton of school. It was really challenging having her home so much since H and I both WFH. She hasn't been a close contact yet this year (knock on wood!) but I plan to have her tested if she is so that she can go to school. My only concern is that she *hates* being tested, so if she really resists we will have to see. But I'm hoping maybe she'll handle it better wihtout us there. I'm not really worried about her being exposed during the testing, I don't consider it more risky than being at school. <shrug>

I'm glad our school is participating, but I can't wait for the vaccine to be approved so that once she's vaccinated she won't have to quarantine at all!

[noodleoo]

Oct 12, 2021 9:24:34 GMT -5 ECB said:

I would want to do the test to stay so that my son is in school, BUT I would want some measures to be taken to keep him away from the positive child, or ANY child who is coughing. I mean.... if you want to spread a virus, coughing is going to do it.

I don't understand this.  The positive kid won't be at school, right?

The way our school is implementing test and stay, it is only for close contacts with no symptoms.  If a kid is coughing or has any other symptoms, they can't participate and need to quarantine/get PCR tested before they can return.

[Susie]

Our school doesn't offer it yet, but if they did I would let DD attend, rather than keep her home for quarantine. Continuity of education is important, and the rapid test isn't that invasive.

ETA:  I'm confident she'd want to participate too, vs. quarantine.

[ECB]

Oct 12, 2021 9:27:58 GMT -5 noodleoo said:

Oct 12, 2021 9:24:34 GMT -5 ECB said:

I would want to do the test to stay so that my son is in school, BUT I would want some measures to be taken to keep him away from the positive child, or ANY child who is coughing. I mean.... if you want to spread a virus, coughing is going to do it.

I don't understand this.  The positive kid won't be at school. 

The way our school is implementing test and stay, it is only for close contacts with no symptoms.  If a kid is coughing or has any other symptoms, they can't participate and need to quarantine/get PCR tested before they can return.

I worded that poorly - I meant ANY child who is coughing.  The positive child was coughing all week - I wouldn't want my son near ANY child who has a persistent cough if there is a known positive case. 

[mrsGreeko]

I’d do test to stay. Our district is not doing test to stay, but also isn’t doing quarantines after school exposure. My oldest DD has been a close contact 4x for school exposure, 2x before she had covid, 1x after she had covid, 1x after she had covid and was vaccinated and never got covid from school exposure. My youngest has been a close contact once, also didn’t get covid. He did actually get sick and was tested via rapid and PCR before we found out that he was a close contact. But he was not sick with covid.

I will do anything in my power to keep my kids from having to stay home this year. Too many quarantines last year resulting in zero covid cases, but a lot of damage emotionally and educationally.

[noodleoo]

Oct 12, 2021 9:32:49 GMT -5 ECB said:

Oct 12, 2021 9:27:58 GMT -5 noodleoo said:

I don't understand this.  The positive kid won't be at school. 

The way our school is implementing test and stay, it is only for close contacts with no symptoms.  If a kid is coughing or has any other symptoms, they can't participate and need to quarantine/get PCR tested before they can return.

I worded that poorly - I meant ANY child who is coughing.  The positive child was coughing all week - I wouldn't want my son near ANY child who has a persistent cough if there is a known positive case. 

That's awful.  Our school has been pretty strict about sending kids with symptoms home.  DD1 has a cough and we kept her home today, getting tested this afternoon.  I know another kid who was sent home for coughing last week.  I'm really worried about how much school DD1 is going to miss due to symptoms since they are sending kids home for runny noses too.  I understand why, but it is hard.  The vaccine can't come soon enough, but I don't know if that will even change how strict they are about cold symptoms.  

[zarapipe]

I’d send and do the test to stay.

[niq]

Unless someone in the household or her social circle is at *serious* risk - asthma that's caused a hospitalization in the past year or two, immunocompromised, over 70, etc - I'd send her and test to stay.

[dcn]

My sister’s kids have test to stay, my nephew was exposed recently and tested each day and was negative so was able to stay in school. I would absolutely do that if I had the option. Ds1 had to quarantine for 10 days and I feel like he missed so much instruction. I helped him complete all the work required but obviously I didn’t do as good a job as his teacher. He’s in 3rd grade.

My younger son is in kindergarten and has been quarantined twice and it’s not as big of a deal for him. I’d still probably do test to stay for him though bc he’s bored at home with me for so long.

[jinkies]

I'm sure I have mentioned many times that DD was quarantined for 24 days in February. It was horrible and disruptive and frankly she is not a child that learns virtually at all, so it set her behind by a month.

All that to say, I would absolutely test to stay. I would do almost anything, honestly, to keep her in in-person instruction if at all possible.

[waverly]

We are doing test to stay. But if the person sat right next to them and was coughing the whole time, that definitely might give me pause. Usually at our school, it's someone who is far enough away in the classroom and everyone is masked.

[macmars45]

I would 100% have my DS(5) participate in test to stay if it were offered at his school.

[Poppy]

After the amount of school my kids have already missed this year with neither having covid, I would love it if our district offered test to stay and would opt for that.

I hope your child stays healthy!

I am very WTF about letting the child with a cough stay...

[timorousbeastie]

In our district, our options are a) 10 day quarantine, b) test to stay (testing is the responsibility of the family, it’s not done at school), no masks required, and c) carry on as normal, continue to send child to school with no mask or testing. Parents get to choose which option they go with. I have no idea why they even bother mentioning the test to stay option given option c).

At our school, I would quarantine DD, as I wouldn’t want her in class with other potentially infectious kids with no masks. But if we were in a district that required masks, I’d be all for the test to stay option.

[Blue Moon]

I'm on day 14 of a quarantine with my 4 year old close contact, who's fortunately had zero symptoms. If test to stay was an option, I'd 100% take it. This quarantine has been brutal and extremely disruptive to both workplaces for me H and me, and I'd do whatever we could to avoid it in the future.

[boiler717]

Test to stay has good data, and ancedotally I don’t know anyone who has been positive while following. I would do that unless someone in my family was high-risk, then I would keep at home. I would possibly also get a PCR on Day 5 per CDC recs if you think she can handle another swab.
My son is currently in quarantine following school exposure. He got a PCR on actual Day 5 and starting Day 8 he can see my vaccinated parents. He can return to on Day 14 because he school doesn’t know how to properly count quarantine days (they count the day of exposure as Day 1 instead of Day 0).

[moonpie]

Oct 12, 2021 9:24:34 GMT -5 ECB said:

I would want to do the test to stay so that my son is in school, BUT I would want some measures to be taken to keep him away from the positive child, or ANY child who is coughing. I mean.... if you want to spread a virus, coughing is going to do it.

I 100% agree. The school’s protocol is to send any child exhibiting covid symptoms to the school nurse. I have no idea what went wrong in this instance but I do want the school to look into it.

[mrsGreeko]

Oct 12, 2021 10:47:10 GMT -5 moonpie said:

Oct 12, 2021 9:24:34 GMT -5 ECB said:

I would want to do the test to stay so that my son is in school, BUT I would want some measures to be taken to keep him away from the positive child, or ANY child who is coughing. I mean.... if you want to spread a virus, coughing is going to do it.

I 100% agree. The school’s protocol is to send any child exhibiting covid symptoms to the school nurse. I have no idea what went wrong in this instance but I do want the school to look into it.

I’m surprised you know who the positive child is at all. Kids are unreliable reporters so if the info came from your child that they are sure that it is x child who is the positive, they might very well be incorrect. They might not have noticed that y child was also absent (assuming that’s how you are determining and not that the school told you).

[moonpie]

Thanks everyone! We chose to do test to stay and her test was negative. She is actually already on day 5 due to when the school was notified, so I feel somewhat optimistic that she might avoid it. I spoke with the principal and he said we can change our decision at any point, so if more kids start testing positive we can move to the full quarantine. He was very reassuring and supportive.

It’s her birthday this week, so I’m really upset that this is the situation we are in.

[moonpie]

Oct 12, 2021 10:58:07 GMT -5 mrsGreeko said:

Oct 12, 2021 10:47:10 GMT -5 moonpie said:

I 100% agree. The school’s protocol is to send any child exhibiting covid symptoms to the school nurse. I have no idea what went wrong in this instance but I do want the school to look into it.

I’m surprised you know who the positive child is at all. Kids are unreliable reporters so if the info came from your child that they are sure that it is x child who is the positive, they might very well be incorrect. They might not have noticed that y child was also absent (assuming that’s how you are determining and not that the school told you).

The school did not tell us which child. We go to a small neighborhood school so most of the parents know each other.

The school uses small pods of 4-5 kids for easier contact tracing, so I did ask DD who was absent from her pod before I knew any other information. Now we know for sure though.

[redpenmama]

Our district is doing a pilot Test-to-Stay program in a few schools (not ours), but I hope it's expanded soon.

Having had both kids exposed in September and one miss several days of school, I would do the Test to Stay program in a heartbeat. There is good data on it (I know some Utah high schools did it last year with a lot of success), and it's preferable over missed learning, IMO. Obviously, if your child or someone in the household is high risk, I would probably just follow your quarantine guidelines.

I hope your child stays well regardless of what you choose!

[sdlaura]

Our school does test to stay and it has been wonderful. Also no aftercare or any activities other than school. There has been no in school spread (no kids that have stayed in school have tested positive after there has been a case in their class). The positive kid and any kid with symptoms can't come to school. It has cut down on so much unnecessary missed school for so many kids.

[jewel]

I realize this is a sample size of one district (12k staff and kids) but we have a much less intense protocol and have had zero outbreaks so far, which I was initially certain would be a disaster.

A “close contact” is only considered as such if either person is unmasked and within 6 feet for more than 15 minutes. Masks are required indoors, except when eating, so this would only be during lunch or recess. An exposed person can stay in class if they remain symptom-free and test twice within 10 days, or quarantine at home for 10 days. If both people were masked during the initial exposure, then it isn’t considered an exposure and nothing is required.

Our family has been very covid cautious and I was certain this would start a domino covid outbreak, every time. But it hasn’t. There haven’t been any known outbreaks at all. We do have positive cases posted daily, but almost every school is at 0-1 case per week.

2 months ago I would have said that I’d definitely quarantine for any exposure. Now, I would easily test and send.

[gretchenindisguise]

To add on - to what sdlaura said - our school is also pretty militant about symptoms. I’m pretty sure DS could cross his eyes in a dare for too long and be sent home for dizziness.

[wise_rita]

Oct 12, 2021 10:21:25 GMT -5 timorousbeastie said:

In our district, our options are a) 10 day quarantine, b) test to stay (testing is the responsibility of the family, it’s not done at school), no masks required, and c) carry on as normal, continue to send child to school with no mask or testing. Parents get to choose which option they go with. I have no idea why they even bother mentioning the test to stay option given option c).

At our school, I would quarantine DD, as I wouldn’t want her in class with other potentially infectious kids with no masks. But if we were in a district that required masks, I’d be all for the test to stay option.

WTAF

[timorousbeastie]

Oct 16, 2021 15:16:07 GMT -5 wise_rita said:

Oct 12, 2021 10:21:25 GMT -5 timorousbeastie said:

In our district, our options are a) 10 day quarantine, b) test to stay (testing is the responsibility of the family, it’s not done at school), no masks required, and c) carry on as normal, continue to send child to school with no mask or testing. Parents get to choose which option they go with. I have no idea why they even bother mentioning the test to stay option given option c).

At our school, I would quarantine DD, as I wouldn’t want her in class with other potentially infectious kids with no masks. But if we were in a district that required masks, I’d be all for the test to stay option.

WTAF

Yeah, WTAF is pretty much my reaction, too (in addition to WhyTF do I live here?).

[starburst604]

Our town does test to stay, we have consented for DD to participate but so far it hasn’t been necessary for her. I’m in favor of that a million times over having to quarantine. We were very, very lucky last school year that she never got exposed at school. The only time she had to stay home was when I had Covid, and that was quite enough for all of us!