I read two good articles today pointing out problems with the way data regarding school reopening decisions is made available. The first is from the Baltimore Sun.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/education/bs-pr-md-schools-coronavirus-data-20201005-20201009-3zwydnjpqjhbfemnblepumy3ii-story.html?fbclid=IwAR3nDkwdyTWLyiVY3orOY7DnYemuiZCvVs7XSppnBnc7lJ3k5J9vm7LSmqs
The article points out that while schools are required to report their COVID cases to the State, the State is not sharing this information. Accordingly, information that could be helpful to administrators in the various districts do not have access to this information.
While all Baltimore-area public school systems chose to begin the school year online, a number of private schools have already reopened to students and taken various precautions to protect school-age children and their households from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, has said all 24 public school systems in the state meet state-created benchmarks that indicate it is safe to reopen for some in-person instruction. And Maryland school superintendent Karen Salmon announced in August $10 million in grants available to the school systems that choose to bring students back into buildings.
COVID-19 cases at private schools could provide communities with a bridge to understanding how the reopening of public schools might fare during a public health crisis.
The Archdiocese of Baltimore has confirmed 20 such cases at 10 of its 44 Catholic schools, which serve about 16,000 students. It’s unclear whether the cases were contracted on campus or outside of schools.
Schools are required to report confirmed cases of COVID-19 to local health departments, said Mike Ricci, a Hogan spokesman.
But some local health officials have declined to answer basic questions about which schools within their jurisdictions have reported cases.
“If we don’t collect this data, analyze it, publish it, there will always be a question mark. It will only be a judgment call to re-open schools.”
Baltimore City health department spokesman Adam Abadir referred questions about cases in schools to the state. And the Anne Arundel County health department has refused to confirm private school cases to “maintain the privacy of individuals,” said spokeswoman Elin Jones in an email. She did not explain how the data could be used to identify people.
Counties such as Harford and Carroll answered specific questions about cases, but would not commit to publicly reporting cases in the future.
That means many families of school-age children have no access to a key metric as they decide how best to balance educational needs against potential public health risks.
The Maryland Department of Health has held discussions with local health officers and school systems about standardizing such case data for public and non-public schools. Some school systems have expressed privacy concerns, said department spokesman Charlie Gischlar in an email.
Gischlar did not respond to questions about which private schools in Maryland have reported COVID-19 cases.
There’s a reasonable argument for the state to release the data, said Tara Sell, a senior associate at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
“Understanding more about what’s happening in schools is going to tell us a lot about what the role of children is in spreading the virus,” Sell said. “If we don’t collect this data, analyze it, publish it, there will always be a question mark. It will only be a judgment call to re-open schools.”
The second article addresses the fact that there is no standard nationwide definition of what constitutes an "outbreak" in schools. People are alleging that schools have reopened in other areas of the country without "outbreaks." However an outbreak in Iowa is not the same as an outbreak in Michigan.
https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2020/10/09/state-outbreaks
For example, Michigan qualifies a workplace outbreak as just two coronavirus infections within the same work location. Similarly, New York requires school buildings to shut down if two people in two separate classrooms become ill. And West Virginia recommends schools switch to remote learning if at least two outbreaks happen in two classrooms and mandates that all schools close if the coronavirus test positivity rate hits 5%.
In contrast, however, Iowa will not announce an outbreak for many kinds of businesses until at least 10% of staff are actively infections. According to a Post investigation in September, the state cited that threshold to "justify withholding evidence that at least 117 people at the Agri Star Meat and Poultry plant … had been sickened with the coronavirus."
Meanwhile, when it comes to schools, Iowa—which does not track or report coronavirus cases in schools—requires each to hold at least half of its classes in person unless 15% of tests for the entire community are positive—far exceeding CDC's guidance that 5% presents a "high risk" of transmission— and a minimum of 10% of students call in sick. According to a White House Coronavirus Task Force report obtained by the Post, Iowa is in the "red zone" for viral spread and has been advised to establish new metrics, such as those used by West Virginia, for reopening schools.
Iowa is also among the few remaining states that have opted not to report Covid-19 case counts by Zip code, information that according to Mooney and colleagues is particularly useful in remote areas where counties may encompass large geographic regions.
Overall, according to the Mooney and colleagues, a review of state policies determined that the identical set of statistics would spur significantly differing responses depending on what state they occurred in. For instance, Michigan would qualify a case rate of nine diagnoses per 100,000 residents as "very high"—resulting in the closure of restaurants and bars, a prohibition on in-person gatherings, and a mandate to switch to remote learning—while Oklahoma when faced with the same case rate would rank it as "low," triggering only recommendations that businesses and schools use increase hygiene measures, the Post reports.
We are wasting so much time fighting among ourselves because the information we need is not available to the public or those making decisions and we don't share a common understanding of what the metrics are, should be, or mean. As a result, we are spinning our wheels, getting nowhere. So frustrating.
|
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}