Updated at 7:54 p.m.
Vermont will begin tracking school closures and distributing rapid Covid-19 antigen tests for parents, the state’s top education official said Tuesday, ahead of a shift in state policy around school coronavirus testing.
In Tuesday remarks and in a brief email sent to local education officials that morning, which was obtained by VTDigger, Vermont Secretary of Education Dan French outlined details of a transition to a new approach toward how schools will handle Covid-19.
Those details include distributing rapid tests to schools for parents to use, updating the state’s written guidance and collecting data on school closures.
State officials have hinted at plans to keep a tally of such closures before, but the announcement appears to be the first formal attempt to do so.
Superintendents and heads of school were instructed to fill out an online form with any school closures retroactive to Jan. 3.
“In addition to helping the AOE better support the field, this information will inform policy decisions by the Governor’s office and the Vermont Department of Health,” French wrote.
The moves come as subzero temperatures forced classrooms across the state to close on Tuesday. Officials warned that closures are expected to become more frequent as schools continue to grapple with the Omicron variant and an ongoing staffing crisis.
The steps outlined Tuesday come on the heels of a Friday email telling school officials to prepare to stop contact tracing and surveillance testing with PCR tests.
“Many of the strategies that previously were effective for us will cease to be useful (if they haven’t already) and will instead become a drain on scarce resources without a clear public health benefit,” French wrote.
That announcement, which followed a week that saw surging Covid-19 cases and at least half a dozen school closures, sparked immediate controversy.
Parents and teachers on social media blasted the guidance as abrupt and dangerous. The Vermont chapter of the National Education Association called the new guidelines a “demoralizing blow” to teachers and blasted the state’s “inconsistent, ever-changing, and confusing guidance.”
“Rolling back protections for (teachers) at this time is dangerous and betrays the commitment we should be making to our teachers,” Becca Balint, Senate President Pro Tempore, tweeted Saturday. “It also keeps this crushing burden on families who are already scared and struggling.”
On Tuesday, French defended the agency’s actions.
Calling the new guidelines “abrupt” was a “fair characterization,” French said. But, he argued, as schools grapple with surging Omicron cases and staffing shortages, officials needed to act fast.
“Both from an operational perspective and a public health perspective, we concluded we needed to make a shift and we need to make that change sooner rather than later,” French said.
The new guidance effectively shifts the responsibility for testing students from school employees to parents or guardians.
Previous guidance called for school employees to create a list of all close contacts — called a “line list” — for every infectious Covid-19 case in school. Unvaccinated close contacts could remain in school by testing negative on five consecutive days, through the “test-to-stay” regimen.
But under the new procedures, school staff will draw up a list of only those students who share a classroom with the infected student.
“This is a more conservative approach that is faster and more comprehensive,” Vermont Health Commissioner Mark Levine said at Tuesday’s press conference.
For unvaccinated close contacts, it will be up to parents and guardians — not school employees — to conduct test-to-stay. After being notified of a close contact, parents will be instructed to pick up rapid tests at schools and test their children daily for five days.
State officials plan to begin sending rapid antigen tests intended for parents to local school districts later this week, officials said. Those kits will be distributed to unvaccinated students who are identified as contacts.
The agency is currently working to improve its guidance around communications between schools and parents, French said.
School districts and supervisory unions were instructed to switch to new testing processes once they have enough tests.
“We will provide guidance and FAQs to support SU/SDs swapping out take home kits for in school kits as soon as they receive them,” French said.
But the new recommendations raise questions about how the state will gather data about positive cases from parents. In response to a question at the Tuesday press conference, French said the agency has not yet determined a policy for that data collection.
“We’ll lose control of that data in exchange for having more broadly distributed tests in the public,” he said.
It’s also raised questions about whether the state can rely on parents to be honest about positive test results — or to test their children at all.
“These are some of the risks that we’re taking on a regular basis,” Scott said Tuesday.
But while the teachers’ union has criticized the guidance, school administrators appear to be more on the fence.
Libby Bonesteel, superintendent of the Montpelier-Roxbury Supervisory Union, expressed concern about the new rules.
“None of these changes as I understand them help us in any way and disturbs some psychological safety we did have,” she wrote.
But Emily Hecker, a spokesperson for the Winooski School District, said she believed the guidance was a good step.
Jeff Francis, executive director of the Vermont Superintendents Association, said the organization has no official stance on the guidance yet.
“We are looking forward to receiving more detailed information about implementation,” Francis wrote.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated when Vermont Secretary of Education Dan French sent an email.
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