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First day of Clark County School District staff COVID-19 testing woes

Posted at 1:35 PM, Aug 11, 2021
and last updated 2021-08-11 22:51:55-04

LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Unvaccinated Clark County School District (CCSD) staff are required to get tested for COVID-19 weekly or until they provide proof of vaccination.

However, when they showed up at the Mojave High School testing site, they were met with long lines of sweaty and tired teachers. Some left in frustration without a test.

MORE: Clark County School District expands COVID-19 testing opportunities for staff

Jennifer Harris, a teacher at Bunker Elementary who has been with the district for 20 years exclaimed: "It’s asinine. We have to do this every week. We left right after our staff meeting. I passed out some flyers to get the word out to my colleagues about how unjust this is. We left about 3:20 and we got here around 4. So about 45 minutes."

This was just one of 8 testing sites throughout the district.

On Monday, Dr. Monica Cortez, the assistant superintendent for the Student Services Division explained: "Our new system that we are using is emocha Health, which is what our teachers and all staff are required to complete daily for their symptom monitoring. That is important. Just like parents monitor their children, we’re having staff monitor themselves."

We reached out to CCSD and got this statement in response:

Due to unforeseen circumstances and to accommodate weekly required COVID-19 testing for identified staff outside of their contractual workday, the District is adding more designated District sites and expanding testing opportunities by implementing the following
  • Unvaccinated staff and staff who have not uploaded their COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card to emocha Health may obtain a COVID-19 PCR lab test (not a rapid antigen test) from a non-District entity (i.e., Walgreens, UMC, CVS, The Southern Nevada Health District, CSN, UNLV) by 11:59 p.m. on the last day of each testing cycle. The staff member must provide their COVID-19 PCR lab result to RMTVerification@nv.ccsd.net.
  • All staff are required to upload their COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card to emocha Health to be excused from weekly mandatory testing. Once again, the District is committed to keeping our schools open for in-person learning, while promoting the health and safety of all students and staff. We will continue to monitor the health data in our community to make informed decisions regarding the implementation of mitigation strategies.
Once again, the District is committed to keeping our schools open for in-person learning, while promoting the health and safety of all students and staff. We will continue to monitor the health data in our community to make informed decisions regarding the implementation of mitigation strategies.
CCSD

"As of last Friday we had over 20,000 individuals upload their vaccinations and that was just in 4 days," said Dr. Cortez

About 41% of CCSD teachers have been vaccinated.

"Some of us have gotten attorneys. We’re just trying to protect our freedoms. I feel like if they are going to mandate this then they are going to start mandating that people get the vaccine," says Harris.

CCSD says at this time parents are not allowed to ask staff if they are vaccinated.