Screenshot: Early educator Camila Pontes 

Earlier this month, Governor Charlie Baker overlooked the needs of young children and their families as well early childhood programs when he announced that rapid COVID-19 testing would be available to K-12 schools, but not early education and care and afterschool programs.

Since then, advocates — including Strategies for Children and 250 other organizations – have sent a letter to the governor asking him to reconsider this decision.

Last week, Strategies for Children and Neighborhood Villages also hosted a panel discussion on this pressing issue, “Prioritizing COVID-19 Testing in Early Education and Care.” A recording of this event is posted here.

“… equity demands that public health measures made available to K-12 [schools] also be applied to early education and afterschool as well,” Binal Patel says in her introduction to the panel discussion. Patel is Neighborhood Villages’ Chief Program Officer.

“We know that testing works. It catches positives [test results] before teachers enter classrooms. And it allows us to identify and address potential exposures early.”

In addition, Patel says, a 12-week pilot program being run by Neighborhood Villages shows that Covid testing in early childhood and afterschool programs can be hard, but it can also be done. One approach is to repetitively screen providers, even if there aren’t enough resources to screen every child. This point is important because it directly addresses the Baker administration’s stated concern that testing in these programs would be, as the Boston Globe reports, “a difficult strategy to employ.’’

The panel discussion was moderated by Kathleen McNerney, a senior editor at WBUR radio. The panelists were:

• Maria Gonzalez Moeller, CEO of the Community Group in Lawrence, Mass.

• Camila Pontes, an early educator at the Epiphany School’s Early Learning Center, and

• Simon Johnson, an MIT professor and a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund

Moeller explained that the teachers in The Community Group’s early childhood program have been working “full-time and in person” during the pandemic. The organization has increased pay and support, using funds from its own budget. But, as Moeller explains, early educators are still experiencing “fear and anxiety and frustration and fatigue.” The organization relies on city-level testing, but the program needs increased testing capacity to increase enrollment; keep children, families, and staff healthy; and retain early educators.

Camila Pontes has seen testing work at Epiphany’s Early Learning Center, which is part of Neighborhood Villages’ pilot testing program. Pontes’ worry has been about infecting others.

“That’s my biggest fear, being a person who is spreading this virus,” she says.

But as part of the pilot, Pontes gets tested for COVID-19 each week in the center’s building.

“We’ve caught positive cases, and that has helped us stop the spread,” she says. Testing has been especially useful in catching the virus in people who are asymptomatic – and the testing program is reassuring for families.

For Simon Johnson, testing is, in part, a matter of parity.

“The case for doing this exists just in terms of equity and in terms of the wellbeing of the workers,” he says. But as an economist he also looks at the numbers.

“I think this is one of the most compelling public investments available at the moment – or perhaps even ever – because, as Maria and Camila eloquently pointed out, when you test people, you’re better able to keep the child care centers operating,” which enables parents to work and earn money. Without testing, an out-of-control Covid outbreak could shut programs down, making it harder for parents to work, feed their families, and pay taxes.”

“So when you weigh up the costs of running these screening programs, which are not high, against the benefits — which is you can keep the child care centers open, you can protect all the workers, the parents can go to work – this is an enormous ratio, about 10-to-1, we reckon, on returns for your public dollars.”

“I think you could actually afford these purely on a state basis because of the return on investment. If the state paid for screening testing, in our assessment, it would get more than that money back because of the extra taxes that they would levy on parents.” In addition the state would not have to pay unemployment insurance to parents who couldn’t work.

To learn more, check out the panel discussion recording. And please reach out to Governor Baker and explain how Covid testing parity for early educators and afterschool teachers would help children, families, the field, and the economy.