State Superintendent Tony Thurmond Underscores How Rapid COVID Testing Can Facilitate Safe Reopening of Schools
SACRAMENTO State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond hosted a statewide webinar today with health experts and educators that addressed the use of rapid COVID-19 testing as a tool to safely resume in-person learning on school campuses.
“I strongly believe that while we wait for a full vaccine roll-out, we also need to be moving toward a strategy for the deployment of rapid COVID testing that is cost-effective for schools,” Thurmond said. “This is one tool in our tool box but an important one. Rapid COVID testing is a game-changer. With mounting data that students are suffering from mental health issues and learning disruptions, rapid testing is a real help for districts looking for ways to get students safely back into classrooms.”
A rural Northern California health department says it was handling coronavirus testing just fine until the state got involved.
In Lassen County, health officials had been running their own free testing clinics since last spring. But in January, OptumServe, a private company hired by the state, took over, leading to what the county spokesman called an inefficient and expensive “boondoggle.”
Now, county officials are cutting ties with OptumServe and blasting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration over centralized testing efforts.
OptumServe staffers were “coughing violently” and not wearing proper protective gear at a clinic this month, county health officials alleged in a scathing letter to the company.
Rural California county says Newsom-backed coronavirus testing clinic is a boondoggle msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
NorCal counties to State: Get out of the way, give us vaccine, let us handle it
Some Northern California counties are tired of the state s top down approach and are asking the state to step aside and let the counties handle their own community. Author: Eric Escalante Updated: 6:52 AM PST February 26, 2021
LASSEN COUNTY, Calif. The top-down approach from the state reached a breaking point in Lassen County after local leaders cut ties with OptumServe, a state partner in testing services. Our initial concerns with having a California centralized testing solution have not only proven to be true but is turning out to be worse than what we had originally thought, Lassen County health officials said in a letter cutting ties with OptumServe.
But now, the same NCBE that spent the whole year declaring that absolutely nothing needed to change announced the results of its own three-year study conducted by its Testing Task Force promising big changes that might calm the mounting pressure on the licensing process… in five years or so.
The new recommendations would not come into effect until 2026 at the earliest, but at least they address the core problems with the exam outlined over the last year, right? Mostly wrong.
In defense of the report, it does correctly identify the need to transition the exam from one based upon encyclopedic mastery of generalist doctrinal knowledge in a profession increasingly oriented around specialization to one focused upon testing legal skills. But