More Bexar schools will offer COVID-19 testing
A mass coronavirus testing program for schools and employers is expanding to more Bexar County school districts.
For about a month, the startup nonprofit Community Labs has been testing students weekly at a growing number of campuses in Somerset ISD as a pilot program.
Starting in November, the six other districts that partner with Texas A&M University-San Antonio in the ASPIRE network will have free access to the testing.
The initiative could reach up to 68,000 students and more than 10,000 staffers in the ASPIRE network, which consists of East Central, Edgewood, Harlandale, South San Antonio, Southside, Southwest and Somerset ISDs.
San Antonio ISD, which has about 48,500 students, also is considering adopting the testing program. A spokeswoman for the district said a plan was in its final stages of development with Community Labs and information on a testing strategy could come next week.
Community Labs, which was spearheaded by local tech entrepreneur Graham Weston, can provide mass testing with results available in 24 hours. Backers hope to establish it as a cheap, fast and accurate way for all kinds of organizations to detect the virus quickly and slow its spread.
Somerset officials launched the pilot program to try to speed the return of students to classrooms based on confidence that the virus can be detected early in people who aren’t showing symptoms. But administrators have had to push for fuller partici
pation in some schools as parental permission for the testing has lagged.
A news release from A&M-San Antonio said testing for the ASPIRE schools will be paid for with grants from local governments using money from the fed
eral CARES Act as well as private donors.
Last week, Bexar County commissioners committed $2 million to Community Labs for providing testing to schools and workplaces.
As of Friday, Community Labs had raised about $10 million from government entities and private donors, labs President Sal Webber said, enough to provide tests though the end of the year for the seven districts in the ASPIRE network and SAISD.
He said he expects fundraising efforts will allow the nonprofit to continue the program into 2021.
A&M-San Antonio created the ASPIRE partnership a year ago to design and operate “lab schools” and share resources within the seven high-poverty school districts in southern Bexar County.
ASPIRE, standing for A&M-SA South Bexar County ISDs Partnership to Impact Regional Equity and Excellence, already is creating partnership schools within Edgewood, Southwest and East Central ISDs.
“When ASPIRE was established nearly a year ago, we hoped to be able to see the types of initiatives that would move the needle on collaborative efforts and opportunities resulting in collective impact,” A&M-San Antonio President Cynthia TenienteMatson said in the release.
“While none of us could have foreseen a global pandemic, we knew that ASPIRE’s ability to work together would increase the agility of the districts to move quickly to identify partners, services and delivery of resources,” she added.
In Harlandale ISD, testing will start Nov. 10 with McCollum High School athletes, fine arts students and others who participate in UIL activities and staffers who volunteer to be tested. More testing will be phased in over time, officials said.
“By being able to use the resources provided by San Antonio’s Community Labs and our ASPIRE Partnership, we are being proactive in making sure we have safer campuses,” Harlandale Superintendent Gerardo Soto said.
“We hope this will allow us to detect those individuals who may be asymptomatic and do our part in stopping the spread of this virus within our district,” he said.