The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School (MVRHS) committee put the final stamp of approval on allocating funds from its budget to pay for regular COVID-19 testing during Thursday’s meeting.
The other four school districts approved their shares of the overall cost at individual committee meetings prior to the MVRHS committee vote, which means that once the rest of the cost gap is closed and implementation logistics are worked out, testing can commence in Island schools.
The high school voted to allocate approximately $46,000 from its $500,000 contingency line in the general operating budget to pay its share, with the understanding that those funds will be dispersed based on the plan adopted by the All-Island School Committee.
The overall cost of the testing program was initially estimated at an All-Island School Committee meeting to be around $302,000, with schools contributing $150,000 of that cost from their budgets based on the number of pupils in each school.
During the MVRHS meeting, Superintendent Matt D’Andrea said that he projects the overall cost to be around $500,000, but that increase in the estimated price will not affect the schools’ necessary contributions. The rest of the money for testing, apart from the schools’ share, will come from private donations through the Martha’s Vineyard Bank Charitable Foundation.
Currently, D’Andrea said Martha’s Vineyard Public Schools (MVYPS) is working on a contract with the testing company, and the schools will have to contract out for testing administration, and laboratory work for testing.
All of these expenses, D’Andrea said, he anticipates to be included in the overall $500,000 cost.
Finance manager Mark Friedman said he will be working with attorneys to draft a contract with the testing program that is in the schools’ best interest.
With the approval of the test funding, Friedman said, there will be around $424,000 left in the contingency fund.