D.C. regional schools reported post-spring break coronavirus case numbers this week that were mostly lower in comparison to previous returns from breaks during the school year.
Testing strategies have varied across the region. Some school districts required testing to return after breaks, such as at D.C. Public Schools. Others sent test kits home, but instructed families to report only positive results, like in Montgomery County. Most Virginia schools did not have compulsory testing after spring break.
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In D.C., more than 43,000 students and staff in the school system uploaded test results before returning from spring break. Of those, 270 tests were positive. (The school system has more than 50,000 students.)
Participation varied by school with some reporting that 100 percent of students submitted tests results and others showing that only 20 percent did.
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The school system also required families to upload coronavirus test results after winter break and a week-long February break. In January, during the omicron case surge, more than 49,000 students and staff submitted tests results, with nearly 3,000 people reporting positive cases.
By February, cases had gone down. After the February break, around 46,000 students and staff submitted test results, with 171 testing positive.
Schools Chancellor Lewis D. Ferebee sent a letter to families Wednesday informing them of the post-spring break covid results. The school system also posted the results online, where families and staff could see how many cases were detected at each school.
“This is a slight increase from February, but remains a steep drop from our first round of mandatory testing in January,” Ferebee wrote in the letter. “We will continue to monitor cases closely, implement our weekly asymptomatic screening testing, and provide weekly test kits to our youngest learners in Pre-K and Kindergarten as part of our holistic approach to preventing the spread of COVID-19.”
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Maryland’s largest school district, Montgomery County, reported 503 positive cases among its roughly 160,000 students on Monday. There were 106 staffers who reported a positive result. The amount of positive cases were a significant decrease from after winter break, when approximately 7,000 students tested positive, district spokesman Chris Cram said.
Prince George’s County — Maryland’s second-largest school system — did not respond to a request for its case numbers.
Many Virginia school districts did not require proof of a negative test to return to classrooms after spring break.
But coronavirus dashboards from area jurisdictions showed a similar trend to the rest of the region — compared to winter break, there were fewer reported cases post-spring break in Fairfax and Alexandria. In Arlington, roughly 184 students and 56 staffers have tested positive in the past seven days, according to its coronavirus dashboard, but the school system did not have readily available data on how it fared after winter break.
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Schools across the region have reduced covid-19 mitigation strategies. Many dropped their mask mandates after guidance came out from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention that eased masking for most Americans. The CDC recommended schools only use masking if the communities had high levels of transmission. Several districts, including those in Virginia and Maryland, also made masks optional after lawmakers lifted mandates in both states. Prince George’s County is one of the only area school systems still mandating masks in its buildings and on buses.