Iowa City Community School District has submitted a request to the state to provide COVID-19 tests for its students and faculty.

ICCSD will collaborate, if the request is accepted, with the state’s Test Iowa COVID-19 program, ICCSD Superintendent Matt Degner said at the Monday joint entities meeting with other Johnson County elected groups. The school district has yet to receive a response if they have been approved or not, he said. 

COVID-19 cases in Iowa City schools have hit the lowest point since the first week of classes, Degner added. 

“We’ve seen good trends in our data, we have positive cases going down,” Degner told the board. “When I left on Friday, we were updating the dashboard and it was our lowest amount of COVID positive students that we’ve had since the second day of school.” 

Classes began on Aug. 24. According to the district’s dashboard, as of Oct. 18, 10 students and three staff members are currently positive for COVID-19. 

Since classes started this fall, 291 students and 46 staff have tested positive for COVID-19.

Degner said the recent mask requirement, as well as students and staff remaining vigilant, have helped cases remain low.  

“All those different components play into it,” he said. “It’s not any one factor, it’s a multiple layered mitigation strategy that we’ve been continuing to use.”

Degner said the number of students that have had to quarantine away from school has also been recently declining.  

“The second most exciting [thing] I would say is the amount of quarantines were extremely down,” he said. “So we have kids staying at school and learning, and that was much more challenging without a mask requirement.”