MAST Academy quarantines 25 teachers, 200 students after a dozen COVID cases in a week
The principal of Maritime Science and Technology Academy on Virginia Key called families to report more than 12 coronavirus cases this week. There are no plans to close the school.
MAST Academy on Virginia Key has quarantined 25 teachers and more than 200 students after at least a dozen positive cases were reported last week, according to the school’s principal.
Principal Derick McKoy called families Friday night with a stern, nearly threeminute-long message.
“COVID-19 has impacted our school in a very negative way,” he said. MAST, he said, is No. 1 in the Miami-Dade County Public School’s central region for most COVID-19 positive cases.
The school district’s COVID-19 dashboard has not been updated to reflect the 12 cases McKoy mentioned in his message. The last cases reported on the dashboard for the school were two positive students on Jan. 19.
MAST ranks 10th on the district’s dashboard for COVID-19 cases, which shows that since schools reopened Oct. 5, the school has had 44 students and two teachers test positive. The prestigious 6-12 magnet school attracts students from around the county and has about 1,500 students and 125 employees.
McKoy said in the message that he investigated and discovered that students were having parties,
get-togethers and sleepovers without masks.
“I cannot control what occurs outside of our school walls,” he said, “but when the impact sends home 25 of our own teachers, this is unacceptable behavior.”
Key Biscayne Mayor Michael Davey said he is aware of allegations of increased parties, but does not know of any specific ones that may have lead to the quarantines.
“A party is not an illegal act,” Davey said. “I’m not sure what action we take other than to educate the community.”
In light of the quarantines, Davey said he will push more coronavirus safety messaging in the community. This will include reminding people who want to have a party to wear masks, have it outside, social distance and limit attendance.
“We want to make sure our kids can go to school and that means being social responsible outside of schools,” he said.
School district spokeswoman Daisy Gonzalez-Diego gave this written statement emphasizing that schools are not the cause of COVID-19 spread.
“As the CDC reported earlier this week, schools can remain safe as long as COVID-19 safety protocols and mitigation strategies are in place,” she wrote. “Since the reopening of schools last fall, Miami-Dade County Public Schools has been committed to protecting the wellbeing of our students and employees by following public health guidelines. Close social gatherings or interactions with members outside of one’s household have been found to be the leading causes of spread, not in-person schooling.
The District continues to urge our community to do their part to keep our schools COVID-19 free.”
School Board Member Mari Tere Rojas, whose district includes MAST, said in a statement that she has been in close communication with the Davey on joint efforts to ensure that the community does its part to keep the schools COVID-19 free.
Rojas said substitutes will be available for all teachers put into quarantine. She also said one area she is worried about with this many students and teachers going into quarantine is teaching regression.
“Our children are the future leaders of tomorrow and they have already gone through so much,” Rojas said.
McKoy called on the school community to “monitor vigilantly” and said any student who tested positive or was exposed to someone who is positive had to be processed by him using a three-page report to the department of health. He called it an “insurmountable task.”
“We can turn a blind eye and continue doing what we were doing, or do something about it to change our current status,” McKoy said. “There is a sense of emergency here, and I need all our families to have a discussion with our children on how to be more responsible so we can stabilize and provide the quality education that they so richly deserve.”
Then McKoy said this to end the message on a positive note:
“My only desire is to leave MAST Academy in a better place than I found it,” he said. “Each of you can also help to do the same. This should be your pledge.”
A school district spokeswoman said Friday that there are no plans to shut down the school, and the district is following its mitigation protocols.
MAST shut down for one day just three days after schools reopened after two students tested positive for COVID. MAST and William Lehman Elementary in Kendall are the only schools in Miami-Dade County that have had to close their doors for deep sanitation this school year due to positive cases.
MAST had about 80% of its students return to classes in October, one of the higher return rates among the county’s public schools. By November, the percentage of students attending school in-person dropped to 63%, or 990 students, according to a spreadsheet provided to the Miami Herald in a public records request. The other 572 students are learning online.