GREENWOOD, Ark. — Several schools in our area are on the Arkansas Department of Education’s list to receive rapid COVID-19 antigen tests for teachers.
The Binax testing kits are meant to be a weekly screening tool for asymptomatic teachers. Greenwood High School and Junior High were both chosen to participate in this program.
“We are not forcing any teacher to participate, they can choose if they wish," said Cody Chatman, Greenwood High School Principal. "Then there will be a weekly screening process where they take a simple nose swab, it’s not near as invasive as a typical PCR test. And then it’s pretty rapid, results are given within 15 minutes."
Chatman says their case count is down but two weeks ago they switched to remote learning for two days because of the number of staff members who had either tested positive for the virus or were in quarantine. He says they are hopeful these tests will help them control future outbreaks.
“We have a lot of staff members who are concerned about the virus as well as several community members," Chatman said. "We hope those staff members who want to take part in this program, and we have several, that this gives them peace of mind not only for themselves, for their students, for other teachers throughout the building, even for their family members."
The other schools in our area that were chosen to participate in the program are Northside High School in Fort Smith, Russellville Junior High School and Harp Elementary in Springdale.
Springdale Director of Communications, Trent Jones says they are not going to participate in the program. He says they already have great community partners where staff and students can get rapid testing.
“When we look at this particular program whereby we are very thankful, they want to partner with the Springdale School District, I think we are asking them or we are looking forward to an opportunity with them to focus on all of our schools,” Jones said.
Arkansas Secretary of Education, Johnny Key said Tuesday (Oct. 37) that Harp Elementary was the school that backed out of the antigen testing pilot program.
The Greenwood School District says it is still waiting on additional training from the Arkansas Department of Health for the test administrator. The tests should be distributed to the schools in the next month.