LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Students at Jefferson County Public Schools will need to test negative for COVID-19 regardless of their vaccination status before they’re allowed to participate in extracurricular activities starting next week.
The district’s new “test-to-play” program, approved Oct. 7 by the Jefferson County Board of Education, begins Nov. 1.
JCPS students involved in sports or other extracurricular activities at their schools will need to undergo weekly COVID-19 testing and produce negative results before they can participate starting next week. Parents and guardians must complete a consent form before their children begin the testing regimen, and tests are available at every school in the district.
“We want to make sure that everybody is staying safe participating in winter athletics,” Seneca High School Athletic Director Paul Holien said during a news conference at the school Monday.
Exactly how many JCPS students will ultimately participate in the program remains to be seen. Dr. Eva Stone, health services manager at JCPS, said schools are gathering rosters of students involved in extracurriculars and families still have time to register their children for the testing program.
Unlike the district’s optional “test-to-stay” program meant to reduce student and staff quarantines, “test-to-play” will be mandatory for all students participating in extracurricular activities at their schools.
That includes students who have been vaccinated against COVID-19. Vaccines have been authorized for anyone 12 and older, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is considering approving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for 5- to 11-year-olds.
Stone said students participating in activities, particularly indoor athletics, are at higher risk of spreading and contracting COVID-19 because they are often in settings where mitigation measures like masking are not in place.
“From a safety perspective and with the incidence of breakthrough cases around the country we felt like that was safest for students,” Stone said of testing students regardless of their vaccination status.
The response to the district’s new requirement for school-based extracurriculars has been “kind of a mixed bag,” Stone said.
“There are people who are very, very glad to see this measure being enacted because I mean this is what you see in sports and other settings, and so this is something that can help add another level of safety for students,” she said. “... There are people who have been not as supportive, who have been unhappy with decision to have testing.”
Holien said the families of Seneca students who play winter sports mostly welcomed the district's "test-to-play" program during a Thursday meeting.
“The parents here have been great,” he said. “... They want their kids to play.”
Josh Leslie, head coach of Seneca's boys' basketball team, said the team's families have been "overwhelmingly positive" about the new COVID-19 testing requirement so far.
"We had a parent meeting the other night about it, and they seemed positive," he said. "I haven't heard any negative feedback from that, and hopefully it'll stay that way."
Some JCPS parents, however, are not fans of the new COVID-19 testing requirement for extracurricular activities.
Steve Ullum, of the Facebook group Let Them Learn in JCPS, said the district's "test-to-play" program is an example of the Jefferson County school board's "unchecked authority."
"That's a breeding ground for disaster when parents are eliminated from the conversation and when there is no governing body to oversee any of their decisions," Ullum said in a message to WDRB News.
Seneca basketball players Josh Lewis and Nevaeh Saunders say they and their teammates are willing to participate in the district's "test-to-play" program every week before they hit the court.
"I've talked to a few teammates that had problems with it at first, but now they see that it's really big that we do this," said Lewis, a sophomore on the boys' basketball team.
"We have students here that it's their last year playing," said Saunders, a senior on the girls' basketball team. "We want to make their last year worth it."
Seneca's boys' basketball team had to call off team activities twice because of COVID-19 exposures last season, "and we never had a positive case," Leslie said.
"We would get started, have to stop, get started, have to stop, so we just could never grow that consistency," he said.
Leslie hopes other Kentucky school districts create similar COVID-19 testing programs and help increase the number of students vaccinated.
He said all of his players have been vaccinated, and Seneca will host the first COVID-19 vaccine clinic for JCPS students on Wednesday.
"That's why we're trying to pass this message on to get as many teams vaccinated, get as many players vaccinated as possible so that nobody has to go through and miss any significant time, especially when it gets important towards the end of the year," Leslie said.
COVID-19 testing consent forms for JCPS families are available here. Hard copies can also be picked up at schools.
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