FARMINGTON — The Mt. Blue (Regional School Unit 9) Board of Directors approved a request to introduce two new “approved uses” of their BinaxNow rapid-testing stores. The board did not move to adjust any of their current COVID-19 safety policies, including the universal masking mandate and quarantining expectations.

Director of Curriculum Laura Columbia asked that the board add two new uses to their BinaxNow testing abilities:

• “One-time testing of unvaccinated individuals identified as close contacts-student or staff-before they begin their quarantine.”
• “One-time testing of identified close contacts, students, or staff, who are fully vaccinated
  within 3-5 days following exposure.”

Columbia said that she and the nurses have recommended these added uses because it seemed like “a logical next step,” is easy enough to do, and simplifies the quarantining process for parents.

“Often time we’re sending kids home and recommending you test as soon as possible and thought this would be a great way to fit into our protocol of what we’re already doing,” she said. “It felt like easiest thing to add that has the most reward without adding work in the process. It could fit in easily to what we already do and be helpful for families (by removing one less thing they have to do).”

Two other uses have already been put in place:

•  “Serial testing of asymptomatic unvaccinated staff who have been identified as a close
contact with a confirmed COVID-19 case.”

•  “Screening of individuals who are members of a positive pool.”

The district first acquired the rapid tests in late September with limited plans to use them.

“There’s lots of options (for using the rapid tests) but we don’t have the capacity for them yet,” Columbia said at the time. Their capabilities have now increased.

Elkington noted that a board member had previously asked if the district could become a testing center. However he said, “we just don’t have the capabilities to do that.”

“Our nurses are working really hard now and if we tried to go to that next step of adding more testing, the whole house of cards — stronger than house of cards it’s cement — it would be 9.6 on the Richter scale of earthquakes if we tried to also add that in,” Elkington said.

The board also left the district’s COVID-19 policies unchanged, though not for lack of trying.

Superintendent Chris Elkington and Columbia said the district has been communicating with the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention to decrease the necessary quarantining period from 10 days to seven. However, they were told that only the CDC sets the guidelines, not the district.

“We are working extremely hard for every effort to keep kids in schools … We were reviewing, ‘are we able to shorten quarantining?’ after we talked to the nurses about it, the safety committee and we got feedback from school physician,” Columbia said. “Today we got feedback from the CDC that they are saying it’s not in our liberty to make that decision. We are really trying to exhaust every resource to safely have more kids in school.”

Columbia sympathized with “why (the) community and families might be frustrated” by sudden notifications that their children are close contacts and have to quarantine.

“I’ve talked to so many parents and I say ‘I get it.’ If you have to go and pick up your kids, my life would be turned upside down too,” she said.

When Director Kirk Doyle asked, “What’s going to be the numbers that we know if we get to we’re going to be able to stop some of (the COVID-19 safety policies)?”

Elkington said that he’s heard that if the district reaches an “80 percent vaccination rate” among students, “if we have all kids participating in pool testing,” these could be signs to loosen some of the mandates and restrictions.

As it stands, the district has seen 72 cumulative positive COVID-19 cases since the beginning of the school year, according to the RSU 9 COVID-19 Data Update acquired from Elkington. Twenty-three students or staff tested positive in the week ending Friday, Oct. 15, eight of whom attend school at the Mt. Blue Campus.

There have subsequently been 564 students or staff deemed close contacts — which is 20 percent of the total student population. Of that number, 322 students have had to quarantine and 242 have been exempt from quarantining because of things like universal masking, pool-testing participation or vaccination status, per the school’s quarantining guidelines.

“If each quarantined student missed 8 academic days (we don’t include weekends) = 8 x 322 = 2,576 days could have been missed because of COVID,” the district noted in its data update.

Two more schools (Cape Cod Hill School and Cascade Brook School) have been added to the list of those in “outbreak status.” The Maine CDC designates an “outbreak status” at a school when there are “three or more … confirmed cases among different households during a 14-day period.”

This brings the total number of schools in “outbreak status” to five out of seven. Only Wilton’s elementary schools, G.D. Cushing School and Academy Hill School, are not.