At first, staff members at Maple Leaf Children’s Center were excited to sign up for Tests for Tots, Vermont’s new Covid-19 testing program for child care centers.
Staff at the Thetford pre-K school and child care center saw the initiative, which distributes rapid antigen tests to child care centers to use after potential exposures to the virus, as a key Covid-19 safety measure — something that, for Vermont’s early childhood educators, was in short supply.
But a month later, amid concerns from staff and parents about the program, Maple Leaf has used none of the tests it received from the state.
“Because people were so uncomfortable with it, I felt in good conscience that I couldn’t just implement this program,” said Retha van Wyk, Maple Leaf’s director.
Roughly a month after state officials announced the Tests for Tots program, the reviews are largely very positive. Most of the state’s child care centers are enrolled, and most of the child care staff and directors interviewed by VTDigger spoke highly of it.
“My families have been very grateful” for Tests for Tots, said Nan Mann, executive director of the Brattleboro Centre for Children. “I think it’s a really successful program.”
But some — roughly a third of eligible centers in Vermont, according to data provided by the Vermont Department for Children and Families — are still not participating in the program. And some early childhood educators interviewed by VTDigger expressed concerns with how the initiative is designed.
Some requirements of Tests for Tots “made me really, really nervous,” said Samara Mays, director of the Montpelier Children’s House, a child care and pre-K center, “and made me ultimately decide that it was just not a good fit for our program.”
Vermont officials unveiled Tests for Tots in early January as the Omicron variant of Covid-19 was breaking case-count records across the country. The initiative came after administrators and staff expressed fears that early childhood education was being forgotten in the state’s Covid-19 response.
The program sends shipments of rapid tests to child care centers around the state, to be used to test children and unvaccinated staff members after a reported Covid-19 case.
Now, 647 of the state’s 1,021 possibly eligible child care centers — just under two-thirds — have signed up for Tests for Tots, according to data provided by the Vermont Department of Children and Families. It’s not clear how many children are enrolled at centers that use the program.
The testing regimen is similar to the state’s Test at Home program for schoolchildren. In both initiatives, parents of unvaccinated children are given tests and instructed to test their kids at home for five consecutive days following a potential exposure.
But that similarity has frustrated some child care providers, who say that the program does not fully take into account the differences between school-age children and toddlers.
For one thing, almost everyone 5 years old and older — a category that includes most schoolchildren — can receive the Pfizer vaccine. Children younger than 5, however, are ineligible. Toddlers also are less likely to be able to wear a mask properly or social distance, according to child care workers.
Administrators said they were less afraid of children getting sick themselves than children catching and spreading the virus to immunocompromised family members.
State officials are implementing the “same rules for (an) unvaccinated population, who also act completely differently,” van Wyk said.
Macie Rebel-Kidwell, a spokesperson for the Vermont Department for Children and Families, said Tests for Tots is based on CDC guidance with a few differences adopted by Vermont experts.
“This program was developed by experts in the Vermont Department of Health and VT’s state epidemiologists and is based on science,” Rebel-Kidwell said in an email.
Some child care administrators who have opted not to enroll in the program said they wanted more flexibility to create their own rules.
Lori Canfield, who runs Southeastern Vermont Community Action’s Head Start programs, said administrators at the Windsor County nonprofit found Tests for Tots’ rules “too restrictive.”
Canfield wants the ability to use tests for vaccinated staff and family members of children—something the program does not permit.
“You could only use the tests on children and staff that were not fully vaccinated and parents and other siblings could not be included when testing,” Canfield said in an email. “Head Start works with the entire family, so this was not conducive with our philosophy.”
But others want even more precautions. In Montpelier, Mays wants unvaccinated children who are potentially exposed at home to quarantine and test negative before returning to child care, which the program does not allow.
She signed up for the program in January, but has since decided to disenroll, she said, leaving her with boxes of unused rapid tests that she plans to send back to the state.
“There’s no wiggle room under Tests for Tots,” Mays said.
And some said the program’s guidelines and rollout have been confusing.
“It just seemed really vague and a little bit scary to try and implement,” said Katie Brown, director of the Champlain Islands Parent Child Center, in an interview in early February. “I have to do a lot of the research on the Vermont Department of Health website myself, because that guidance isn’t being funneled down to us, as providers.”
Rebel-Kidwell, the Department for Children and Families spokesperson, said the program’s requirements are intended to “make sure the test kits are used properly and in a way that safeguards child health.”
“We recognize that some providers felt the rollout was rushed, while others felt it was not soon enough,” she said. “As it has with every testing program, the state works intensively to provide testing resources as quickly as possible, and works with field partners to ensure the program is as clear and simple to implement as possible.”
But she left open the possibility that the program could be changed in the future.
State officials are “following guidance provided by the Vermont Department of Health and will make updates as they recommend,” she said.
