As the number of covid-19 cases rises in Pennsylvania and the region and vocal groups of parents and students continue to rail against a state mandate to wear masks in public schools, it is hit or miss whether local districts publicly report the number of infections among their students and staff.
As of late last week, nearly 3,700 covid cases had been reported this school year in children 4 and younger in Pennsylvania and almost 20,000 cases had been reported among children ages 5 to 18, according to the state Department of Health. That includes 261 and 1,535 cases, respectively, in Allegheny County and 92 and 560 in Westmoreland County.
Allegheny Valley School District has maintained a dashboard to track cases since last school year. Spokeswoman Jan Zastawniak said the district previously sent letters to parents when a positive case was reported.
“The tracker was very helpful in delivering more timely information to parents. We thought it was a quicker and better way for individuals to see the status of our school,” Zastawniak said.
Allegheny Valley’s tracker lists active and inactive cases by school and is updated every time a positive case is reported. As of Friday, the district had two active cases at Springdale Junior-Senior High School, the tracker showed.
West Deer School District’s tracker lists cases by month at each school. The numbers are updated daily, spokesman Shawn Annarelli said. So far in September, Deer Lakes has reported 24 cases, up from 10 in August, according to the district’s dashboard.
“The school board of directors feels it is important to be transparent about cases being reported to the school. Any cases we report are sent to the Allegheny County Health Department,” Annarelli said. “The tracker shows we are being transparent, and anyone who has interest in knowing how many cases we have can see it at any given time.”
Greater Latrobe School District created a dashboard on its website during the 2020-21 academic year to keep residents informed about the number of covid-19 cases reported at its five schools.
Last year, case numbers were updated daily. Now they are refreshed each Friday.
Superintendent Georgia Teppert said the dashboard was updated daily last year to give parents the latest case numbers to consider as they weighed whether they wanted their children to receive full-time remote instruction at home.
That flexible online program is not available this year.
“For a parent to pull a student from the classroom, it would be for a nine-week period,” Teppert said.
As noted on the dashboard, it is used to report “active cases” in which a student or staff member “was in a school facility or participated in a school activity/event while contagious.”
“If there would be an issue where we would see a building that would have a huge (case) spike, obviously, we would react, to do what we have to do,” Teppert said. “Fortunately, we haven’t seen that.”
Likewise, Hempfield Area School District has an online dashboard that includes a “physically present” caveat, meaning the student or staff member displayed covid symptoms while at school or an extracurricular event. As of Friday, there had been 78 such reported cases this school year, including 42 active cases.
Superintendent Tammy Wolicki said the dashboard was continued this year after it was requested through a family survey.
“A suggestion by one of the respondents was, ‘I would like the district to keep the Covid Tracker up to date on the website so that we can make informed decisions about mask wearing,’ ” Wolicki said. “This comment was in relation to the parent choice for mask wearing, prior to the mask mandate. Discussion occurred with the school board in this regard and, for the reason stated, it was decided that continuing to post on the tracker provides transparency.”
Kiski Area School District updates its tracker on weekday afternoons.
“We used to post an individual letter to our community with each positive case. As case counts grew, it became impractical to post individual letters each day. The tracker allowed us to post that data in a place that was easy for families to access at any given time,” Assistant Superintendent Jason Lohr said, adding that the district has posted a dashboard on its website since fall 2020.
As of Friday, Kiski Area had 12 active cases at the high school, 10 at the intermediate school, one at the upper elementary, two at East Primary and three at North Primary, according to its dashboard.
New Kensington-Arnold School District does not have a covid dashboard on its website but is working on one, Assistant Superintendent Jon Banko said.
Banko said the district has informed parents and families of covid cases and exposures on an as-needed basis. He said the district has had fewer than 15 cases this school year, with most at Roy A. Hunt Elementary and the high school.
“We kept our people informed. As long as you provide relevant information to your families, the dashboard is just extra work for somebody,” Banko said.
“We notify the people that need to be notified,” he added. “You don’t want to overinform. People have their right to their health privacy, too. It’s a small community. It’s easy for information to get out.”
New Kensington-Arnold could model its dashboard after the one maintained by Highlands School District, Banko said, with a simple chart showing cases per school that would be updated on Mondays.
Burrell School District also does not maintain a dashboard on its website.
“We communicate with our families via our communication system,” Superintendent Shannon Wagner said.
Last school year, Wagner regularly updated the school board and the public about the number of covid-19 cases in the district during school board meetings. This year, Wagner said, the district has had four cases.
Greensburg Salem School District uses an internal tracker that is shared with staff nurses and administrators, said Acting Superintendent Ken Bissell.
“We haven’t decided to make that public yet,” he said. “It could be something that we would decide to do down the road.”
Because case numbers are reported by school, Bissell said, he is concerned about protecting the privacy of those affected by covid in buildings where student numbers are on the low side.
“We don’t want to out a student or a family that might be represented by that number,” he said.
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September 19, 2021 at 04:00PM
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Some local school districts maintain updated covid trackers while others keep counts internally - TribLIVE
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