Closes Friday, November 6, 2020
The Public Schools of Northborough and Southborough have joined the “Safer Teachers, Safer Students: SARs-CoV-2 Testing Collaborative.” The Collaborative is a group of Massachusetts communities who are piloting programs to develop a comprehensive, coordinated infrastructure for asymptomatic COVID-19 screening of PreK-12 staff and students with the goals of detecting and reducing viral transmission and helping our schools remain open for in-person learning.
The Public Schools of Northborough and Southborough is seeking your input on a COVID-19 screening program for the District. The District has successfully implemented mitigation efforts to minimize viral transmission in the school setting, including wearing masks, symptom screening, assessment and improvement of ventilation systems, social distancing, enhanced cleaning and disinfecting protocols, and handwashing.
The District is pursuing a comprehensive viral screening program to detect new infections early in the disease progression to add to these efforts. This survey is anonymous and open to all families with children in The Public Schools of Northborough and Southborough.
The goal of this initiative is to screen all PreK-12 students and staff across our three Districts. However, if the fundraising efforts move forward and the funds raised do not allow for the testing across our ten schools, the COVID-19 testing will be prioritized in the following areas:
District faculty, and staff
Algonquin Regional High School (ARHS) students
Trottier and Melican Middle School students
Northborough and Southborough elementary students
The current cost of COVID-19 screening is estimated to be at least $15.00 per person per week. The District is developing an operational and financial model for conducting a 20-week program in our District.
Our goal of this survey is to assess the willingness of Northborough and Southborough families to contribute to a COVID-19 screening program, regardless of your child(ren)’s learning model.
We are not asking families to fund a specific staff/student or one’s own child(ren). Rather, we are asking for families to support funding a program that would be implemented across the District. The scale of the initiative would be based on the dollar amount raised (See priority areas above).
Participation in the COVID-19 Screening Program will not be determined by any family’s ability/inability to financially contribute to the program. Your responses to the survey questions are non-binding. Further, the cost of the screening is likely to decrease, allowing the District to expand screening or lower the cost of the program.
To accurately assess our community's willingness to participate in and contribute to this initiative, it is critical that each family submits one survey response.
