‘Test to Stay’ launches at VISD amid new hires, staff departures

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, November 3, 2021

On Monday, Nov. 1, Vashon Island School District (VISD) launched a COVID testing program, at a walk- or drive-through site located near the district’s StudentLink building.

The drop-in site — which will adhere to the guidelines of the Washington Department of Health (DOH) “Test to Stay” program, is currently open on school days only, from 7:30 to 11:30 a.m., and is staffed by two recently hired part-time COVID safety coordinators hired by the district. The new staffers, Lara McKnight and Melissa Aguirre-Lopez, will also assist in contact tracing, said Superintendent Slade McSheehy.

In the coming weeks, McSheehy said, the district hopes to also offer afternoon hours at the test site.

The program offers free, rapid diagnostic testing for VISD staff and students only, with results available 15 minutes after testing.

More information about the site can be found at tinyurl.com/ypbpmx8e.

Guidelines for the “Test to Stay” program will mean some changes in how the district advises parents of close contacts in school cases. Previous to the launch of the testing program, quarantines were recommended for unvaccinated, asymptomatic district students who were deemed to be close contacts of infected students.

Now, those students are able to remain in their classrooms if they receive a negative test result soon after their exposure, and then test negative again at least once in a seven-day period. Multiple tests throughout the seven-day period are also possible.

The change allowing asymptomatic, unvaccinated students to return to school was further explained by McSheehy at an Oct. 28 school board meeting.

DOH guidelines for the “Test to Stay,” McSheehy said, now stipulate a “modified quarantine” for these students to attend school, but otherwise remain at home away from others, not participating in extracurricular activities or school child-care programs.

“It’s actually very good news,” McSheehy said, at the board meeting, who went on to detail that since the start of the school year, the district has designated 150 students as close contacts to cases in the schools, with the vast majority of those students being younger, and unvaccinated. Those younger and unvaccinated students, he said, could not be present in classrooms for between five and ten days of school due to their exposures.

In only two cases, he said, had further transmission to a close contact in a classroom taken place — a less than 2% transmission rate.

“We believe that ‘Test to Stay’ is the right strategy to keep our kids in school and to do it safely,” he said.

DOH guidance also now specifies that students who are at least three feet apart and consistently masked in classrooms or similar structured environments do not have to quarantine, regardless of vaccination status, if they are exposed to COVID-19. Other DOH guidance advises that people who are fully vaccinated do not have to be quarantined if exposed to COVID-19, as long as they have no symptoms.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an infected person can spread COVID-19 starting two days before the person has any symptoms or tests positive. The CDC also advises that a person is still considered a close contact even if they were wearing a mask while they were around someone with COVID-19.

Two key health services positions in district now open

On Friday, Nov. 1, School Nurse Pam Kirkpatrick announced her intention to resign from her job with Vashon Island School District.

Elizabeth Parrish, who served as the district’s Health Services office manager for the past seven years, also left the district last week after accepting another job.

The departures of Parrish and Kirkpatrick leaves one part-time nurse, Ann Zapf, working three days a week in the midst of the ongoing pandemic.

The Beachcomber contacted Kirkpatrick on Monday, who declined to discuss her resignation, except to say that as a person at high risk for COVID due to multiple health conditions, she no longer feels safe in working face-to-face after the recent changes to DOH guidelines.

“I don’t feel comfortable with the state’s continual reduction of safety precautions,” she said. “I’m truly high risk, ​​and my lung doctor has assured me that I would be the one who didn’t survive if I got COVID.”

Kirkpatrick has worked for the district for the past six months, initially training with the district’s nurse Sarah Day, who retired at the end of the 2020-2021 school year. Since the fall, Kirkpatrick’s job has put her at the forefront of the district’s COVID response.

A registered nurse with a master’s degree, Kirkpatrick has been employed as a school nurse since 2007.

Dr. Zach Miller, an infectious disease expert who is a member of Vashon’s Medical Reserve Corps COVID Task Force, said that Kirkpatrick’s departure is a big loss for the district.

He described her as an experienced and exceptional school nurse, who had worked diligently to gain more expertise about COVID in terms of understanding its epidemiology and its transmissions.

In his role of consulting with the district on behalf of the MRC, he added, he’d been impressed with Kirkpatrick’s organizational skills and meticulous record-keeping in tracking district cases.

“She’s the kind of medical professional I really love — committed to doing the right thing and doing it well,” he said. “She cared about the students and the staff, and worked to keep them healthy.”

In discussing Kirkpatrick’s resignation, in a phone call on Monday, McSheehy said that he couldn’t speak on the subject of Kirkpatrick’s decision to resign.

“People resign for all sorts of reasons, and we wish anyone who leaves the district well,” he said, adding that the search to fill Kirkpatrick’s job — both temporarily and in the long term — would be headed by Kathryn Coleman, who is director of student services for the district.

Since Kirkpatrick was hired by the district, some of her job duties have changed. In mid-October, McSheehy told The Beachcomber that Kirkpatrick would no longer have a role in determining close contacts of infected students — a notable change in practice for the district, as both former School Nurse Day and Kirkpatrick had been tasked with that duty previously.

Asked why the change was made, McSheehy told The Beachcomber that the decision was made after the district “identified the need, opportunity, and a better way to allocate resources.”

Additionally, since September, the MRC’s role in the schools has also been formally redefined. Through 2020 and much of 2021, the MRC played an active role in contact tracing for the school district, but now no longer performs that duty.

Currently, VISD conducts initial contact tracing within school grounds and advises families using DOH guidance, and then refers families to the MRC if they wish to consult on potential spread to other family members and the broader community. If families grant permission, information about school cases is then shared with the MRC.

The district’s designated COVID-19 coordinators — a group that includes McSheehy and the three principals of Vashon schools — make determinations about close contacts in cases in the schools.