Shortly after the start of the school year, CRLS students had the chance to partake in a new measure to protect the community against the COVID-19 pandemic: pool testing, a new method pushed by the Baker administration to ramp up COVID-19 testing in schools. This is now available to all students at CRLS.

Pool testing is done nearly every school day from 8:00-11:00 AM in the Media Cafeteria. Testing dates for students are based on their grade: freshmen on Monday, sophomores on Tuesday, juniors on Wednesdays, and seniors on Thursdays. Students ages 18 or older can self-consent to participate in testing, while those who are younger must get a permission form signed by their parents or guardians to be tested.

In terms of the procedure, Kristin Bell from the Teen Health Center told the Register Forum to look at pool testing like “a collection of students being tested together in a group.” Students can come at any time during the three hour time frame and be tested with nasal swabs. Names of those who choose to participate are recorded to keep a list of the individuals in each grade or pool. Samples from students in a pool are collected and placed together in the same tube to be tested at a lab. If the pool group is reported to be of any concern, such as an “inconclusive result,” or a positive case, members of the group are immediately contacted and asked to take a rapid antigen COVID test. Bell added that pool testing is a necessity to combat the ongoing pandemic, as testing for COVID rather than relying on students to remain home if they feel sick is far safer, since “people can still be positive without displaying any of the symptoms for Corona.”

The introduction of pool testing at CRLS has also provided easy access for students to get tested. When asked by the Register Forum, Elisa Alvarez-Rosenbloom ’24 spoke positively about the convenience of having testing available at school: “It’s nice that I can just get tested at school instead of traveling to another testing site that is further away.” However, some students have raised concerns regarding the accessibility of testing due to the time schedules. Jaedon Ballou, a sophomore at CRLS, commented that while pool testing lets the school effectively test large portions of the student body, the 8:00-11:00 AM time frame can be inconvenient for some, as students would “have to leave class or come to school early to be tested.” Ballou stated that the turnout could be even greater if students were able to come after school for testing since “students wouldn’t need to go out of their way and make time to do it.”

This piece also appears in our October 2021 print edition.