Andy Baker

KILGORE — Kilgore ISD board members discussed plans this past week to make COVID-19 antigen testing more available to students with the help of a state program.

Superintendent Andy Baker told board trustees and administrators that the state is seeking a way to distribute federal funding for COVID-19 relief to better benefits school districts.

“The bottom line is the state of Texas still has some of the federal CARES money and that the state of Texas is trying to find ways to help public schools. One of the programs they’ve recently come out with is the ability to offer (COVID-19) antigen tests to districts,” he said. “If you choose to do this as school district, the state can send you X amount of these tests that you can provide for your staff members and that you can choose to make available to your students.”

Longview ISD already is part of the state’s COVID-19 testing program and has started offering screenings to staff members and students.

A shortage of substitutes, combined with an uptick in illness among staff and some students on quarantine for COVID or out for other illnesses, forced Kilgore ISD to go to all-remote learning recently at the high school and middle school.

“What we have done up to this point is request permission from TEA to be eligible (for the testing supplies),” Baker said.

Charles Presley, Kilgore ISD’s director of safety and emergency management, told trustees that the district is in a good position to qualify for the funds.

“We’ve met the criteria,” Presley said. “Basically, we offer on-campus instruction to any student who would like to attend. That was one of the biggest criteria. And then you have to be willing to follow their guidelines, so if we accepted these tests and we administer them to our students and our staff, we have discretion on that. We can determine how we do that and then we monitor the administration of these tests.

“We make sure that our staff members will go through some training. For example, our nurses can go through a 30-minute training and then they’ll be certified to administer the tests. There’s to be a coordinator for the district — that would be me — and I’d have to submit the tests that have been administered throughout the week, just like we’re submitting to TEA now. It is a voluntary test. No one can be required, student or teacher, to take the test.”

Presley added these the COVID-19 tests were designed to be less intrusive than the large nasal swabs used earlier during the outbreak

Presley added he had met with Longview ISD staff members who said the program had been helpful for them, and they had carefully apportioned their testing kits based on local COVID-19 infection data and hospital admittance rates.

“You cannot re-submit for more tests until your stockpile is down to 25%,” Presley said. “If we plan to move forward, our tests are sitting there with our names on them in Tyler. We’d have to go pick up the first round so we can go over there, myself and several of our nurses, and they’ll show us the process, how to administer them. And then they will ship them directly here. We would not need a large warehouse to store them, just some cabinets and things like that. They will provide us PPE (personal protective equipment) that will be needed for anyone providing the test.”