THE MALDEN ADVOCATE–Friday, January 21, 2022 Page 15 DESE issues new guidance on contact tracing as part of COVID-19 response in public schools State Dept. of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) reports on safety, success of in-person learning The Mass. Dept. of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) issued the following guidance information to all public schools this week: T hank you for your ongoing efforts to keep schools open and safe for our students. You have been diligent about implementing key COVID-19 mitigation strategies, such as vaccinations, mask wearing, and testing, and we commend you for your hard work. We have now had the opportunity to review available data about our testing program. We are writing to share timely information from those data and as a result offer an updated set of COVID testing options, including a weekly at-home test for participating staff and students, to optimize in-school learning. Review of Statewide Testing Program Data in Schools With over 2,000 schools in the state participating in some form of our current testing program this school year (i.e., symptomatic testing, routine pooled testing, and Test and Stay), we have robust data on the prevalence of COVID-19 in schools. Those data are overwhelmingly strong: Schools are safe environments for teaching and learning. For example, the individual positivity rate in K-12 schools in the state’s pooled testing data reveal case rates significantly lower than the statewide positivity rate. Last week, despite elevated K-12 positivity, the estimated individual positivity rate was still only less than 1/5 of the statewide positivity rate (126.7%). On top of these much lower-than-average positivity rates, schools are one of the few types of settings in the state where individuals are tested on a regular basis. Data from our Test and Stay program are equally strong about school safety. Students and staff individually identified as asymptomatic close contacts and repeatedly tested in school K-12 positivity source: CIC K-12 data from processing laboratories, published on a weekly basis on Thursdays through the Test and Stay program test negative over 90% of the time. As of January 9, 503,312 Test and Stay tests had been conducted; 496,440 of them were negative (98.6%). It’s also helpful to look at nationwide data related to Test and Stay to examine the extent to which secondary transmission (i.e., transmission to close contacts) is occurring in schools. The evidence from California and Illinois cited by the CDC in their Test to Stay guidance noted secondary transmission rates of only 0.7-1.5%.A pre-publication study of the first 13 weeks of the Test and Stay program across all participating Massachusetts schools found that the secondary transmission rate was 2.9% and that tertiary transmission was very low. As demonstrated above, test positivity rates in Test and Stay indicate that individuals identified as close contacts in school are very unlikely to contract or spread COVID-19. These data show that transmission from close contacts is a rare occurrence in schools and that, therefore, extensive contact tracing and associated Test and Stay procedures are not adding significant value as a mitigation strategy despite the demand they place on the time of school health staff and school staff at large. As a result, we are recommending that school health personnel increase their focus on identifying symptomatic individuals, rather than monitoring in-school close contacts who are unlikely to contract or spread the virus. The new set of testing options described below, which includes a weekly at-home test for participating staff and students, will uniquely support this shift in focus. Other New England states, such as Connecticut and Vermont, have recently transitioned from individualized contact tracing to the use of athome tests and focusing school health efforts on symptomatic testing. New COVID Testing Options to Optimize In-Person Learning To enable districts and schools to make the shift towards greater focus of school health personnel on identifying symptomatic individuals and other aspects of COVID-19 management, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS), and the Department of Public Health (DPH) will now provide a new option within the statewide testing program to optimize in-person learning. Specifically, districts and schools participating in symptomatic and/or pooled testing may choose to continue those testing strategies and discontinue contact tracing and Test and Stay.As an additional resource, districts and schools that elect to make this change will be provided with rapid antigen at-home tests for all participating staff and students that can be used on a weekly basis. Economic experts, lawmakers and watchdog orgs respond to income tax hike Public warned against being educated by propaganda T he Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance (MassFiscal), Citizens for Limited Taxation (CLT), Beacon Hill Institute President Dr. David Tuerck, National Federation of Independent Business Massachusetts State Director Christopher Carlozzi and a bipartisan group of state lawmakers, including State Senator Ryan Fattman as well as State Representatives Colleen Garry, David DeCoste, Marc Lombardo and Nicholas Boldyga, recently warned the public about an upcoming ballot question proposed by the legislature. The question would amend the state constitution and allow the legislature to raise the income tax rate on specific groups. The announcement was prompted by a study done by the Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts University and a push poll done by the MassINC Polling Group in support of Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka’s ballot question. Tuerck offered comments about the study and warned the public that giving lawmakers the ability to raise the income tax would have a negative impact on many taxpayers across the Commonwealth. CLT Executive Director Chip Ford, a veteran of similar ballot fights, pointed to the fact that past attempts to raise the income tax have been failed by the voters on five separate occasions. MassFiscal Spokesperson Paul Craney highlighted that watchdog organizations will continue to vocally warn the public about propaganda being pushed on them from proponents trying to confuse them on the legislature’s ballot question. Carlozzi emphasized that Massachusetts should not be raising taxes and instead warned the legislature and the public that the focus should be an economic recovery. A bipartisan group of lawmakers made it clear that despite what push polls want the public to believe, any tax collected by this potential ballot question will enter the state’s general fund, be completely subject to the spending priorities of the legislature and would not be guaranteed to fund transportation or education. “What brings us together today is our joint recognition that the public needs to be warned about the realities of this November’s ballot question, which would empower the legislature to raise the state’s income tax,” said Craney. “This is not a citizen’s petition, it’s a group of lawmakers that want to raise taxes at a time when the state is beyond flush with cash, but everyday residents are being slammed with record inflation, a potential recession, and continue in the dredging on of a major pandemic.” “Any explicit promise that these funds would be guaranteed to increase our transportation and education spending are simply propaganda. The SJC [Supreme Judicial Court] ruled that promise unconstitutional in 2018 and the legislature has a very poor track record of abiding by the wishes of voters regarding ballot questions when it conflicts with their own spending priorities,” said DeCoste. “CLT has spent decades defending the taxpayers and we have consistently seen similar attempts to confuse the public. What the public needs to always understand is that they have a constitutional guarantee for equal taxation, and what could be more fair than that?” asked Ford. “In our opinion, it has worked for hundreds of years and it needs to be protected for hundreds of years to come.” CLT was founded to oppose and defeat the fourth graduated income tax scheme in 1976 and led the also-successful opposition which defeated the next grad tax proposal on the 1994 ballot. “Several national studies revealed just last week that Massachusetts saw the highest outward migration of population in New England,” said Tuerck. “Massachusetts saw some of the highest rates in the country for population loss. Among the reasons for why these people left was due to taxes. If we want to stop losing people to other tax friendly states, we must first stop raising taxes and then do everything we can to keep them here. Raising the income tax is a good way to accelerate the population loss.”
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