New York State’s Test to Stay policy went in to affect across school districts in Erie County last week. The plan calls for students to continue attending classes if they been exposed to
The COVID-19 virus in school and are asymptomatic. A trial run of the policy began in the Grand Island school district in December and the same program is being run next door in Massachusetts.
Erie Niagara Superintendents Association President Michael Cornell said Test to Stay works in keeping kids out of unnecessary quarantines.
“It does what it's designed to do which is keep healthy kids in school and help us do what we can to keep COVID out of school,” he said.
The next step Cornell believes is moving towards mask less classes to start the 2023 school year.
“We've been asking the governor in New York State Department of Health for months for some kind of schedule or understanding of their thought process around an off ramp for all this stuff,” said Cornell, who also serves as Hamburg Central School District Superintendent. “Like at the beginning of the year, when we started talking about a mask mandate in schools, we said masks for now not masks forever. That's still true. We cannot mask our children in school forever.”
Meanwhile the Buffalo Teachers Federation issued a statement Thursday calling for more clarity and enforcement of district COVID-19 protocols to keep students, families, staff and the community safe.
