SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Both parents and school districts were concerned as students returned to the classroom this week. Attention has now turned to testing, and questions remain about whether school districts will have enough supplies
Sacramento City Unified School District said it’s doing okay now, but it will need reinforcements soon.
Andrea Hassan is a parent with kids in the Sacramento City Unified School District.
“Parents, we have our Facebook page, and we have been talking about the comeback. And yeah, a lot of parents were really nervous. But basically, we are happy to come back. The kiddos need it,” said Hassan.
She said they had not run into problems thus far.
“From what I hear on the news, we’re really lucky because our school did have all the tests -- those quick tests you can take home. So we did have those, so we were able to use it to come back,” Hassan said.
Victoria Flores, director of student support and health services with the district is happy too because it alerted the district early to a surge.
“When we’re looking at those results coming back, we had about 20,000 of those test kits resulted through our primary health and over 500 positive cases reported,” Flores said.
That’s 2.5% of all tests.
Flores said they were lucky because those who tested positive were able to quarantine and not mingle with the rest of the students and staff.
She said the district then did a record number of additional tests Monday at various sites like Serna Center, Albert Einstein Middle School, and on location at individual schools. Consequently, the number of positive cases had increased dramatically past that 500.
“You know, the last I looked, I think we had a couple hundred at least. And every minute that number shifts and changes,” said Flores, implying it kept going up.
She said the district’s okay at the moment, but they’re going to need more tests soon.
“We definitely could use and need more, particularly as more and more families are learning of exposures. We have asked for more and we’re hopeful we’ll get those sometime this week,” Flores said. “Right now, we have enough test supplies in stock because we had ordered and stocked them up. However, we will say we know there have been testing shortages before and testing shortages nationally. And so we are worried, and carefully monitoring our stock.”
Flores also said the district was holding a number of vaccine clinics during the week at places like Peter Burnett, Ethel I. Baker, and Ethel Phillips Elementary Schools and at Serna Center.
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