OAKLAND — Almost three weeks after Oakland Unified School District’s 35,000 students returned to classrooms since the start of the pandemic, dozens of students and teachers have reported getting COVID-19 on campuses or elsewhere and seven classes have been forced to temporarily close.
Earlier this week, however, district officials learned that at least 12 cases — some of which had prompted them to close classrooms — were actually false-positive.
After some students and teachers tested positive at several schools, the district started testing others who were possibly exposed, as per its protocol, and caught the mistake, district spokesman John Sasaki said Wednesday.
“Vestra, the contractor who does our testing, had some kind of issue either interpreting the tests or registering the information, so the test results were reported incorrectly,” he added.
The false results were from rapid antigen tests given to students or staff at Montclair Elementary, Montera Middle and Oakland High schools. Followup PCR tests showed they were negative, he said.
By 7 a.m. Thursday, the district’s online dashboard of daily COVID-19 case numbers reported that seven classrooms were closed and everyone in them quarantined. According to the dashboard, 86 students and 15 staff members across Oakland schools reported having the virus.
District officials still are trying to figure out how many of those may be false tests too and whether more classrooms may need to be closed.
Those decisions are made case by case with guidance from the Alameda County Public Health Department, though typically when three or more people in a class test positive they’re considered “epidemiologically linked,” meaning there’s a good chance the virus has been spread in the classroom.
In one Oakland High School classroom, eight students or staff had COVID so everyone was sent home to quarantine, according to the district. Classrooms also were closed at Greenleaf Elementary, Lockwood STEAM Academy, East Oakland PRIDE Elementary, Fred T. Korematsu Discovery Academy, and REACH Academy.
The spread of COVID-19, driven by the delta variant, has prompted some families and teachers to call for increased testing and strengthened safety measures.
“Oakland schools have implemented multiple safety layers to protect students, families, and staff, but we are not living in the same reality of just six weeks ago,” Keith Brown, president of the Oakland Education Association, said in a written statement. “Our community case rate has taken a turn for the worse – it’s ten times higher now than when many of our safety policies and agreements were first developed.”
The rolling seven-day average for positive test results was 3.4% on Aug. 24 — the latest data available from the county. That was down from 5.7% at the beginning of the month but higher than the .6% reported in early June.
At a school district board meeting earlier this month, parents interrupted a discussion over the superintendent’s new contract to plea for more aggressive contact tracing and improvements to air purification and ventilation systems in cafeterias and other gathering spots, The Oaklandside reported.
School board director Mike Hutchinson introduced a resolution then to have the district offer testing at every school site. The district currently offers testing at 10 locations throughout Oakland and provides at-home rapid testing kits that families can pick up at every school site. It sends “rapid response” teams to school sites or student homes to confirm positive cases.
Testing at every school could cost $2 million for extra staffing and $6 million for the additional tests, according to Hutchinson. Instead, the board approved an amended resolution to offer biweekly testing “as soon as it is feasible” and to seek more support from the state and federal government to increase testing capacity.
Meanwhile, more testing is already on the way. Effective Sept. 7, all Oakland Unified teachers, administrators, staff, contractors and volunteers will have to get vaccinated or submit to weekly testing — a policy announced by the district just before Gov. Gavin Newsom issued the same mandate statewide.
As of Aug. 10, some 92% of the more than 3,700 staff members who reported their vaccination status to the district said they were fully dosed, according to the district.
But union representatives say it’s necessary to test students more frequently.
“It is urgent that students be tested weekly at every school,” said Phyllis Copes, president of SEIU Local 1021, which represents school staff. “Our elementary students are too young to be vaccinated and that is where the spreading is happening.”
About 1,200 people had signed an online petition urging the school board to adopt weekly testing by late morning Thursday.
Despite their concerns about the delta variant and appropriate testing, parents also have expressed gratitude to the school district for keeping kids in the classroom as much as possible amid soaring cases.
One parent wrote that their child is showing marked improvement in “mental and social well-being” since returning to the classroom. “OUSD is demonstrating that we can live with the Covid, which is here to stay, and that our kids’ academic and social lives are the number one priority!,” the parent wrote.
Bay Area health officers issued a joint statement Thursday reaffirming their support for keeping kids in school.
“We know that when rates of COVID are high in our communities, cases will appear at schools, just as they do in other settings,” they wrote. “However, with effective protocols in place — including universal indoor masking, vaccinations of eligible persons, testing, good hand hygiene, staying home when sick and proper ventilation — the data shows that these multiple layers of defense can stop the spread of COVID in school settings.”
