Reply-To: Becky McFall <[email protected]> Dear LPS Community, I am writing to give you an update on our district COVID-19 cases. Yesterday's campus specific emails, Weekly COVID-19 Testing Report 1/21, provided the summaries from our weekly in-school testing. This message provides information regarding all known positive cases from all sources. These numbers have been updated and include additional cases that have been reported to us from families after prior communications were delivered. You will see from the information provided in the table below that our data is trending in the right direction with positive cases going down overall. However, they are still not at our pre-December Recess levels. While our case numbers are still relatively high, it is good to see the reduction in positive cases and the total numbers of cases by school.
Given that the number of positive students in each school has gone down significantly, we will resume after school activities this week. 12/17 – 12/23/21 12/24 – 1/6/2022 1/7 – 1/14/22 1/15 – 1/21/2022 Students Employees Students Employees Students Employees Students Employees Totals PreK Lincoln 0 0 1 0 1 1 2 1 6 Lincoln K-4 3 0 37 9 28 1 7 5 90 Lincoln 5-8 2 0 29 6 16 0 8 1 62 PreK Hanscom 0 0 2 2 1 0 1 2 8 HPS 3 1 7 12 6 1 6 0 36 HMS 2 0 20 5 7 2 6 2 44 Totals 10 1 96 34 59 5 30 11 245 Yesterday, school families received an email message regarding changes to our testing program with the opportunity to test your children weekly, at-home, in addition to our weekly in-school pool testing. This will increase our ability to identify positive cases sooner and before students and staff come to school. Here is an excerpt from that message with the link to opt in to receive at-home tests for your children. We strongly encourage participation in this increased testing opportunity. The new at-home testing program will begin the week of February 7th. This program will provide each student who has opted-in one at home rapid antigen test each week at no cost to the family, to be used on Monday morning before school. This new opportunity provides significant benefits: Identifies positive cases before exposure occurs at school Provides double the frequency of routine weekly tests Most importantly, provides positive results from weekly tests within minutes rather than having to wait 2-3 days for PCR pool test results Allows the district to better respond to positive cases before in-school spread begins In combination with this new at-home program, we will continue our weekly PCR pooled testing and our symptomatic rapid testing, and discontinue our Test and Stay program as well as close contact tracing in school. While Test and Stay has been successful in limiting lost learning days, it found relatively few positive cases, compared to the number of tests performed, and the resources to support the program will be redirected to providing the at-home tests under the new state program. All students are eligible for the at-home testing program, regardless of vaccination status. Only students whose families have opted them into the at-home testing program will receive tests to participate. All participants will be asked to test every Monday morning before coming to school (or on Sunday evening, if Monday is not feasible). Students who are positive must stay at home and report their positive result to the school and their primary healthcare provider. Staying home when positive prevents spread in school and contributes to keeping our schools open and everyone in our community safer. Thank you all for doing your part to keep our students and staff in school. All the best, Becky McFall, Superintendent
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