Hamilton school board staff working on ‘enormous’ job of bagging rapid test kits for students
Staff at Hamilton school boards worked through the weekend to repackage COVID-19 rapid tests for Hamilton students returning to classrooms Monday.
It is an absolutely enormous task," said chair Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board Pat Daly.
The Ministry of Education promised two rapid tests for each student returning to school on Monday, but the job of bagging and distributing has fallen to local school boards, adding potentially hundreds of hours of work.
At the Catholic board, up to 20 staff members were tasked with repackaging approximately 50,000 rapid antigen test kids, which come in boxes of between five and 25, into about 25,000 sealable plastic bags with two tests in each.
Daly said employees from a number of different administrative positions" across various departments are involved.
Rapid tests arrived Friday at the board's Nicholas Mancini Centre in central Hamilton, where two meeting rooms have been converted into a personal protective equipment (PPE) and test-kit storage and distribution centre.
Daly said the board is grateful for the significant investment" by the provincial government.
In an email to The Spectator Friday, Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board spokesperson Shawn McKillop said a shipment of 89,000 rapid tests had arrived at the board's Education Centre on the Mountain.
We will need to process them and deliver them to schools," he said Friday. Staff will be working over the weekend to prepare or re-kit' the packages and deliver them to schools."
McKillop said he didn't know how many staff would be tasked with repackaging, but that it's a real team effort."
School boards say tests will be available to students next week, but may not be available to all students Monday. Per education ministry direction, boards are prioritizing distribution to elementary school and child-care centres.
Kate McCullough is an education reporter at The Spectator. kmccullough@thespec.com