By WIBW TV's Kimberly Donahue
ST. GEORGE, Kan. (WIBW) - It wasn’t an easy start to the school year at St. George Elementary in the Rock Creek School District.
“The high number of positives it was truly an ‘oh no’ what’s going to happen” Rock Creek Superintendent Kevin Logan recalled.
The school was identified as a COVID cluster site in late August.
Logan, however, was prepared.
A few weeks earlier, he had applied for a grant through the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) that allowed for school-based testing.
KDHE’s testing program is funded with $87 million from the American Rescue Plan Act.
School districts can choose to adopt any or all of the following testing programs:
Test to know, which provides diagnostic COVID testing for students, teachers and staff. Testing can be done at a school building or a central location in the district.
Test to stay and learn, which tests close contacts daily during their quarantine period to allow them to continue in-person learning if they have a negative COVID test result or have a shortened quarantine period with continued negative testing.
Test to stay, play and participate which tests students on sports teams or clubs regularly to ensure they can keep participating in their activity.
Rock Creek chose to use the test to know and test to stay and learn.
“We got the understanding that students could spend their quarantine time at school versus at home if they tested everyday,” Logan said.
“We looked at our data from last year and we lost just over 7,000 student contact days due to quarantine, even with the limited number of students and staff that were COVID positive.”
He added, ”Taking the fraction of that number and being able to keep those kids in school was gonna be huge for us”.
Keeping kids in class remained a high priority.
“It’s paramount to keep kids in school,” he said.
“We saw learning growth last year, we didn’t see the growth we’re accustomed to we are a very high-performing school district we provide ourselves in our academics and our activities we could not perform academically last year like we had in previous years.”
Nurse Keele harp joined the district as part of the program she said she’s already seeing the benefits.
“Our program has already been super successful we’ve actually saved 693 days since starting the program those students would’ve needed to quarantine at home,” she said.
“They’ve been able to stay in class and participate with negative testing. so I feel like overall, our goal to keep kids and staff in school has been amazing and even parents and staff are thrilled with it.”
The district is excited to give students some normalcy.
“For the most part, parents and students have been really excited they’ve been able to stay and participate.” Harp said.
“We know we’ve got kids here and engaged in the learning process,” Logan said.
“I give a lot of credit to the onsite testing it’s been able to keep the students here.”
According to KDHE, 180 school districts out of 307 in Kansas participate in the program.