Some administrators say the weekly COVID-19 testing program is a burden on staff and disruptive for students.
Kindergarteners, a few with face masks, sing and jump during class at Iroquois Community School in Des Plaines on Aug. 5, 2022. Despite the urging of the state’s health department, many Illinois school districts are pausing their weekly COVID-19 SHIELD testing for students this fall.
The Illinois Department of Public Health announced in June it renewed an agreement with SHIELD offering every public school outside of Chicago as well as the state’s private schools the opportunity to use the University of Illinois’ saliva-based testing platform at no cost for the 2022-23 school year. Chicago Public Schools has a separate testing program.
Last year, 258 public school districts signed up for the program, with testing conducted at about 1,700 public and private school buildings, Heller said. The program covers the cost of testing supplies, support for collection and transportation of samples, and lab work. But schools producing fewer than 50 samples on a given day must collect and deliver the samples for analysis themselves, though they are reimbursed $8 for each test they collect and transport, according to Heller.“Over the past year plus, SHIELD Illinois has worked to reduce as many barriers as possible to make this manageable for schools,” Heller said.
While several large suburban districts, including Naperville Community Unit School District 203, Elgin School District Unit 46 and Evanston/Skokie Community Consolidated School District 65, plan to resume their SHIELD testing programs, others are opting out. Wilmette Public Schools District 39 is pausing SHIELD testing so officials can see what conditions are like in the community, but has “left our lines of communication open,” said Tony DeMonte, the district’s administrator for technology and safety.
“Nobody should be surprised when cases are up, hospitalizations are up and deaths are up,” Murphy said.“I think everyone has COVID burnout, but COVID is not burned out,” he said. “Everyone is tired of it, but you can’t let your guard down in the middle of a pandemic.” Machak said the pre-K-8 school district tested more than half of its roughly 4,800 students once a week and “honored the requests of the parents who decided to opt out.”
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