Communication Disparities and Trusted Sources of COVID-19 Information in Massachusetts School Districts.

Context: The COVID-19 pandemic led to the closure of prekindergarten to grade 12 schools and an inequitable return to full-time in-person learning.

Objective: To explore how ethnic and racial differences across school districts in Massachusetts correlate with parents' attitudes, beliefs, and trusted sources of information about COVID-19 and mitigation strategies.

Design: An electronic survey was distributed by school administrators to parents and guardians in November and December 2021 using existing school district contact lists and established methods of communication (email in 2 school districts; email and text message in 1 district).

Pooling for SARS-CoV2 Surveillance: Validation and Strategy for Implementation in K-12 Schools.

Repeated testing of a population is critical for limiting the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and for the safe reopening of educational institutions such as kindergarten-grade 12 (K-12) schools and colleges. Many screening efforts utilize the CDC RT-PCR based assay which targets two regions of the novel Coronavirus nucleocapsid gene. The standard approach of testing each person individually, however, poses a financial burden to these institutions and is therefore a barrier to using testing for re-opening.