BY MATT LINDSEY
North Country This Week

CANTON – St. Lawrence County schools will be required to test 20% of students and staff if the region enters a “Yellow Zone” due to a COVID outbreak, according to Canton Central School Superintendent Ron Burke.

Local districts will be sending home permission slips to parents as early as next week that will seek permission for students to be tested for COVID-19 at school.

Students will not be required to take a test if parents do not wish to. However, staff will be required to, as a condition of employment, if randomly chosen

Burke said that schools in Lewis County reported that most parents supported their child being tested. Based on that, Burke was not anticipating a lack of students to test.

If a region enters a "yellow zone" designation due to a COVID-19 outbreak, there will be new restrictions in place. They include limiting mass gatherings to 25 people, restricting max capacity of houses of worship to 50%, dining will be permitted, but limited to four people per table and schools will need to test at least 20% of students and staff to keep in-person learning an option.

Earlier this fall the state started identifying regions where COVID infections were rising. Regions are broken up into three colors, with more severe restrictions enforced depending on the level of outbreak.

“If we end up in a yellow zone, we will be required to within two weeks, test 20% of our in-person student and faculty population,” Burke said. That applies to each building individually.

Burke said he would be working on a way to make testing random for students and faculty.

"Yellow zones" are the least restrictive of the three designations made by the state, followed by orange, and then red, the most restrictive.

Burke said he has been working with local school and Public Health officials and together they have crafted a common form that was approved by the county attorney.

“The reason we’ve gone through the county attorney is we will be operating the limited labs services contract,” Burke said, noting that Dr. Andrew Williams will be in charge of testing.

The tests are provided by the state through the county, at no cost to schools, other than the labor of administering the test and clerical duties.

He said nurses were expected to be trained next week and that the test was not invasive. Results are returned in about 15 minutes. Testing is completed on school grounds.

Burke said a larger issue was the paperwork involved and submitting information to the county and state, which would involve more staff.