PEORIA, Ill. — The Peoria Public School District 150 Board of Education is scheduled to vote Monday night on two agenda items that, upon passage, will allow for COVID-19 testing inside district schools.
One is the amendment to the school’s communicable and chronic infectious disease policy that will allow for the testing.
The other is an agreement with Pekin-based Reditus Labs that will provide the district with polymerase chain reaction tests to be administered on school grounds to students and staff.
“It’s non-invasive… where results will be available within 48 hours,” said Superintendent Dr. Sharon Desmoulin-Kherat.
Most tests, according to the agenda memorandum, will be available within 24 hours.
Funding for these tests was made possible by a $200,000 gift from the Gilmore Foundation, which was matched by Reditus.
Kherat said school nurses were working closely with Reditus personnel on determining the best place inside the schools to administer the tests.
She said testing locations will be different for each school, based on logistics, but added cafeterias and gyms will likely be utilized in most situations, and each person will be tested with the utmost privacy.
“I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be where when you enter you have to stand in line, and that kind of thing, but there is a procedure where they’ll call them down,” she said.
Testing for each student will be administered periodically, and in a staggered format, in which a portion of the student body will be tested daily so all students will have been tested at least once in any two week period.
Students involved in extracurricular activities will be tested more often.
“And so, a kid may be tested multiple times a week,” said Kherat.
If the board does approve the measures, testing would begin as early as Tuesday.
“Once it’s approved, then notification of the parents [will be sent out], and then we’re ready to go. We’ll get started ASAP, and every high school student will be tested,” Kherat said.
Any asymptomatic student whose parents or guardians don’t approve of their being tested will not be able to return to in-person learning, and therefore will be assigned to remote learning or an alternative learning plan, based on their individual needs.
Symptomatic students who refuse to be tested or whose parents refuse to allow them to be tested will automatically be placed in quarantine per Illinois Department of Public Health guidelines.
All students will be tested for free.
