Metro Schools contract with Meharry for student COVID-19 testing, safety measures set to end
Meghan MangrumMetro Nashville Public Schools contract with Meharry Medical College for COVID-19 testing is set to end.
With just days left in the $18 million deal, the district hasn't spent the full amount to provide testing and monitor school safety protocols and will instead spend about $14.3 million on the venture.
The partnership, launched in January as the district prepared to reopen schools for all students, has cost Metro Schools about $12.3 million, according to a June 11 memo from Chief of Staff Hank Clay.
Clay estimated that the total cost for the school year will come out to around $14.3 million when the contract expires at the end of this month.
PREVIOUSLY:Why Metro Nashville Public Schools is conducting random COVID-19 rapid tests with students
The Metro Nashville Board of Education approved a five-month contract with Meharry Medical College Ventures Inc. — a for-profit subsidiary of Meharry Medical College — on Jan. 12, authorizing the district to use up to $18 million of its federal coronavirus relief funds for Meharry to test students and staff for COVID-19 and to create a comprehensive school re-entry plan.
Some community members and families have remained skeptical of the partnership, questioning the high cost of COVID-19 testing, whether additional staff members were needed and the slow rollout of the rapid testing program.
RELATED:Metro Nashville Public Schools softens mask requirement for summer school students
About 10,500 total tests administered
During the first month of the partnership, only 127 tests were administered in six schools, though more than 130 new staff members had been hired for the 400 positions listed in the contract as of mid-March.
But the testing ramped up. In total, Meharry staff conducted 10,530 COVID-19 rapid tests across the district’s schools as of June 11. Only 72, less than 1%, resulted in a positive test result.
School districts across the state, and even the country, implemented random, rapid testing for COVID-19 this spring.
RELATED:Meharry pledges COVID-19 testing at every Nashville public school
The method of "surveillance" testing was an attempt to catch outbreaks early and ensure schools could remain open despite the ongoing pandemic.
Hamilton County Schools in Chattanooga was one of the first school districts to pilot a rapid testing program in Tennessee. Other districts, including Atlanta Public Schools, Baltimore City Schools, New York City Schools and Chicago Public Schools, also implemented similar strategies to randomly test staff and students.
A Jan. 21, 2021 executive order signed by President Joe Biden even pledged to "provide support for surveillance tests for settings such as schools”.
The scope of the program
Some critics of Metro Schools' program have raised concerns with the high cost of testing — which in some cases have been available for free from the federal or state government. But district officials have maintained that the $18-million program encompassed a much wider array of services than just testing.
According to Clay's June 11 memo to school board members, the district's goals for the program were to create the "best possible" COVID-19 mitigation conditions in order to open schools and then sustain in-person learning, in part through random testing.
Email records obtained by The Tennessean indicate that conversations between district officials, including Clay, Director of Schools Adrienne Battle and Meharry President and CEO James Hildreth and Patrick Johnson, senior vice president and chief strategy officer at Meharry, began in December as the district grappled with how to safely reopen schools in the spring.
Nashville Mayor John Cooper's Deputy Chief of Staff Robert Fisher, then senior adviser for education, was also included in the planning stages.
By January, a contract was developed with a cost breakdown of $2.35 per student/per school day based on the number of students expected to return to schools in person at the time, according to emails.
Though most contracts for services are required to undergo the typical bid process, the district was authorized to conduct emergency contracts by Cooper in 2020.
As a result, the district did not consider other bids for these services.
The district contracted with both Meharry College Ventures Inc. and ReCOVer-Health, a new company co-founded by Johnson in August 2020. The company has provided COVID-19 management services to businesses, including Nashville Convention and Visitors Corporation and has worked in partnership with Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
At the beginning of the year, the Meharry team visited every school to assess existing COVID-19 safety protocols, such as how people were being screened when they entered the building, the availability of social distancing and how school staff were handling individuals presenting COVD-19 symptoms.
“Additionally, MMCV provided staff to support every MNPS school either through a dedicated staff member or, if staffing levels were not sufficient, splitting the support between schools,” according to the memo.
'Exactly' what these federal funds are for, top school aid said
About $5.2 million of the total cost of the program was spent on startup costs. Those costs included items such as public and private data dashboards and a website for parents to sign their children up for testing. They also included establishing a COVID-19 screening and testing plan and providing mobile technology packages — with thermal cameras — to schools.
The district spent an additional $1.9 million on mobile thermal cameras to screen individuals' temperatures despite Meharry initially providing donated cameras for use, Main Street Nashville first reported.
According to the June 11 memo, 828 Metro Schools students have been confirmed positive for COVID-19 and 8,020 have been quarantined because they were symptomatic or deemed a close contact of someone who tested positive for COVID-19 thanks to contact tracing efforts by school nurses and Meharry staff.
District officials have continued to praise the program.
During a March school board meeting, Clay hinted that he didn't think the district would spend the full amount allocated to the contract in response to questioning from school board member Fran Bush.
"This is exactly what these funds are for, to help us get in school and stay in person as much as possible," Clay said. "Honestly, I’m looking for this to be a national model that other school districts could follow as well."
Battle said "it might be easy for some to forget about the enormous challenges" the district faced in getting students back into classrooms.
"Many teachers, staff, parents, and students were frightened for their safety and those parents who wanted their kids back in classrooms were also counting on us to keep them safe while we did it," Battle said in a statement to The Tennessean Wednesday. "We worked with Meharry, a trusted institution in our community, to develop as robust and comprehensive a plan as possible. ...Ultimately, I believe it was a good thing for our schools and helped us to return students to the classroom while many other urban districts kept their doors closed.”
ACROSS THE STATE:Tennessee school districts are now using rapid COVID-19 tests to test staff and eventually, students in schools
FEDERAL FUNDS:Tennessee to Metro Nashville Schools: Immediately account for $110M in federal grants or risk future aid
The program was completely funded by federal coronavirus relief, or ESSER funds, and is set to conclude at the end of the district's Promising Scholars summer program.
The district received more than $424 million through the federal government's three rounds of coronavirus relief funding including the initial CARES Act and the most recent American Rescue Plan signed into law by Biden in March.
The funds were initially issued beginning in March 2020 to offset reopening costs such as paying for personal protective equipment and other supplies needed to implement CIVID-19 safety measures, but the use of the funds has been expanded to include giving teachers hazard pay, increasing social-emotional support for students and tackling learning loss.
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Meghan Mangrum covers education for the USA TODAY Network — Tennessee. Contact her at mmangrum@tennessean.com. Follow her on Twitter @memangrum.