When her daughter enrolled in preschool at Harriet Tubman Elementary in Columbia Heights last year, Taylor Jantz-Sell decided to sign up as a volunteer and chaperone for school activities and field trips. But when teachers explained what it would take to get involved, she was incredulous.

“I laughed out loud,” she said. “I thought it was ridiculous; I couldn’t believe it.”

D.C. Public Schools require parents looking to volunteer or chaperone to get tested for tuberculosis and provide fingerprints for a background check at their own expense. While the latter made sense, the former seemed excessive to Jantz-Sell—both in the time and cost involved in getting a TB test. The test ultimately set her back $60 and occupied the better part of a day, followed by a second visit to have the results read.

DCPS is the only school system in the Washington region that requires a TB test for potential volunteers and chaperones, making it something of an outlier among cities along the East Coast. Charter schools, which educate almost half of the city’s 94,600 students, are able to set their own requirements, and many of the biggest operators don’t include a TB test.

Imposed alongside a mandatory background check back in 1999, the test—either done on the skin or by drawing blood—aims to curb the spread of the contagious disease. But some parents said it dissuades many people from completing the volunteer clearance process, robbing schools of more parental involvement and community building. The cost can also be an obstacle for lower-income parents.

“It’s a huge barrier, and I know other schools have had to cancel field trips because they don’t have enough chaperones,” said Jantz-Sell, who now serves as president of Tubman’s parent-teacher organization.

Alison Griffith had a similar experience at the Takoma Education Campus, where her two children are enrolled. She now serves on the school’s parent-teacher organization, and when she first joined, she noticed a dearth of volunteers and chaperones for school activities and field trips. After a push by the parent group to recruit parents, she said they would notice a steep drop-off between those who signed up as interested and those who completed the clearance process.

Last year, Takoma teamed up with four other nearby schools for a volunteer recruitment drive. Forty-four parents said they were willing to volunteer or chaperone, but only 26 completed the TB test and fingerprinting. The two steps are tied: getting fingerprinted requires showing proof of a negative TB test, and the fingerprinting is done at DCPS’ central office. This year, of the 40 parents who signed up, only 16 made it through all the steps.

“A lot of people see three steps and just think that’s too difficult to manage and don’t want to invest the time, so they write it off completely,” she said. “Up to this point, we haven’t seen a justification for why there is a need for a TB test. That’s the highest barrier for getting our volunteers in.”

In a statement, DCPS spokesman Shayne Wells said the TB test comes at the recommendation of the D.C. Department of Health. According to health officials, there were 36 new cases of tuberculosis diagnosed in D.C. in 2018. The national TB incidence rate for 2018 was 2.8 per 100,000 residents, though D.C. was higher than that—5.1, the fourth highest in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The caveat: D.C. is an all-urban jurisdiction, making comparisons to the states tricky. New York City, for example, had a TB incidence rate of 6.8 in 2018.

“It is spread pretty easily,” said Dara Koppelman, the chief nursing officer at Mary’s Center, which runs numerous health centers in and around D.C. “It’s not as infrequent as you would think. TB does tend to be more widespread in other countries, and I think because D.C. is a place where we have a lot of people from a lot of different areas of the world, there may be higher incidence of TB here than some other areas of the country. But we definitely do see active cases of TB within our patient population.”

According to D.C.’s Department of Health, two in three new tuberculosis cases recorded in D.C. between 2014 and 2018 involved people born abroad, mirroring national statistics showing higher TB rates among immigrant populations. In 2003, 10 students and four staff tested positive for tuberculosis after they came into contact with a foreign-born student. D.C. now requires that students be tested for TB to enroll in school.

Still, no other jurisdiction in the Washington region has a requirement for volunteers to get TB tests. Several require some type of background check (Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax County, and Prince George’s County), while others require training to recognize child abuse or neglect (Montgomery County). Fairfax County once required a TB test, but has since done away with it. Neither Baltimore nor Philadelphia public schools require a TB test for volunteers or chaperones; some California schools do.

While the D.C. Department of Health does offer free screenings to people who have been diagnosed with TB, it does not conduct free tests to detect the infectious disease.

Alex Vann has a daughter in kindergarten at Van Ness Elementary in Navy Yard, and she went through the whole clearance process—TB test included—in order to attend field trips. She said she understands tuberculosis is a serious contagious illness, but testing for it can also be logistically and financially challenging for some parents. She said parents at the school have been discussing ways to simplify the process.

“A lot of [us] find that it’s the same parents over and over again that are taking time out of their schedules to volunteer for field trips. One of the solutions is that we should have a mobile clinic in a sense where a nurse comes out to give TB tests and come back and read them at the school,” she said.

D.C. already offers to send a mobile fingerprinting unit to schools where large numbers of parents have completed the TB test as part of the volunteer clearance process (saving them a trip to the central office to get fingerprinted). And Wells, the DCPS spokesman, said the school system is considering ways to make getting the test easier.

“DCPS’ desire is never to burden community members who volunteer to support our students, and is reviewing the TB and fingerprinting policy for volunteers. The goal of our review is to determine opportunities that provide more flexibility and partnership with family members and other volunteers whenever possible,” he said.

Vann said she hopes officials can find a solution — without one, she fears schools will continue to struggle to recruit volunteers and chaperones.

“I see both sides of the coin, I just wish there was a better solution to bridge the gap and build community,” she said.

This story originally appeared on WAMU.