School COVID testing eased for the vaxxed

The city Education Department says it will make its school COVID-19 testing program more accessible to vaccinated staff who want to participate with concerns about rising cases and the emergence of the omicron variant of coronavirus.

The DOE’s school COVID-19 surveillance testing program has been mostly geared toward unvaccinated students, with unclear and shifting rules about whether vaccinated staff and students are included, educators say.

DOE spokesman Nathaniel Styer said Tuesday the agency will soon be “issuing updated, uniform testing guidelines for all staff who wish to participate” in school COVID-19 testing.

City education officials didn’t specify how the staff testing will work or how many employees can get tested each week, but said “we are adjusting our courtesy testing program to make it available to all staff. We are sending more details on this to our school communities soon.”

The DOE has not required workers to get tested since the vaccine mandate took effect Oct. 4.

Still, thousands of staffers continued to get tested at city schools each week, according to city data collected by the parent group PRESS NYC and analyzed by Jen Jennings, a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University.

DOE officials say those tests were mostly among employees who hadn’t yet received their second vaccine dose and still needed to get tested every two weeks under state rules.

As of Nov. 15, NYC Health + Hospitals officials coordinating the DOE’s school testing program said that “except in rare circumstances, DOE staff will be fully vaccinated and in compliance with the New York State requirement, and will not be tested in school during surveillance testing,” according to an email sent to principals obtained by the Daily News.

The number of employees getting tested in schools dropped from 5,462 during the week of Nov. 8-12 to just 141 for the week of

Nov. 15-19, according to the data.

School leaders say they’ve gotten different answers from testing labs week to week about whether fully vaccinated staff can get tested at school.

“Every time they come, they have a different approach,” said one Manhattan principal who spoke on the condition of anonymity, noting some vaccinated teachers who asked to get tested have been turned away.

The city teachers union, which has criticized the DOE’s testing program for being too small, called on the city Tuesday to “resume testing adults in school buildings,” citing “the new threat of the omicron variant” and an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases citywide.