Supt. Lazard announces COVID testing for students

Evangeline Parish Superintendent of Schools Darwan Lazard, during the school board meeting held Wednesday, November 4, announced the district is looking at offering COVID-19 testing to students and faculty with symptoms.
Anyone with symptoms would be referred to a local doctor to get a rapid test, but the school would be able to administer rapid tests should the need arise.
“We will not be in the testing business,” said Lazard. “So, it’s not like we’re going to be testing everybody who just feels like they want a test. It may be used for some extraordinary circumstances.” He gave an example, saying if a classroom has a couple of students with symptoms, the class could be shut down to quarantine. If the student’s rapid test comes back negative, then there would be no quarantine necessary. “This might be something that would be of help to the parents and help everybody at the school feel safer.”
Lazard added the tests would be administered with the parents’ permission. If the test is positive, the student would be tested again to make sure. “Our goal is to continue educating the students and to do it in a safe way. We want to keep our employees as safe as we can. We can’t guarantee nothing will happen, and I’ve said that repeatedly. The cases we generally deal with happen away from the campus, and somebody comes to the campus with it, but thankfully we’ve had great cooperation from our parents, from our employees, even our students have been very cooperative throughout this whole process. We’ve been able to stay in the business of educating students.”
After consulting with principals, Lazard also announced students will begin phasing back into schools on Monday, November 9. The phase-in will start with sixth and twelfth-graders. All of Group A will go Monday and Tuesday, like they normally do. Half of Group B will go in Monday and Tuesday, and on Tuesday, the other half of Group B will join them, so that all of Groups A and B will have face-to-face instruction by Tuesday. All sixth and twelfth-graders will continue face-to-face instruction on Thursday and Friday. Wednesdays will be kept as distance learning so that the schools can be sanitized, but teachers will still keep their office hours. The new schedule does not apply to students enrolled in Evangeline Virtual Academy (EVA). EVA students will remain with their schedules.