How will parents learn if school has a case?

With all three South Florida school districts about to open for in-person learning, parents want to know what is happening in their child’s school during the pandemic.

How much they will be able to learn, and how useful that information will be in helping make family health decisions, remains to be seen.

Based on reviews of school districts across Florida, and interviews with leaders of South Florida’s districts, here is what parents

can look forward to:

Online dashboards that track COVID-19 cases reported at individual schools, including children. teachers and staff members. Whether those case numbers are real-time, include quarantined students, or lag by days, will vary.

Phone calls or emails if a child is exposed to another person with COVID-19.

Mandates that children in contact with an infected person at school stay home for 14 days.

Children with symptoms at school will be immediately isolated and sent home.

Little to no information about what is happening in individual classrooms.

“Anyone who is about to start in person is concerned,” said Burt Miller, president of the Broward County PTA/PTSA. “We want real-time information on how the virus is impacting our child’s school.”

All three South Florida districts say they will release information to parents by using an online dashboard that shows coronavirus cases by the school with the number of employees or students who are infected.

Cindy Schneider, a Davie mom, said she’s fearful about sending her daughter to her back to her high school campus and will watch the dashboard closely. “I am all for kids going back, but online is going well. I want as much information as possible so I can decide for myself.”

Only 36 of the 70 districts in Florida offer a COVID-19 dashboard to track cases. The most comprehensive dashboards include not only how many are infected, but also how many students are in quarantine. Some dashboards update nightly, others once or twice a week.

In South Florida, the amount of information posted by school districts on their dashboards could vary:

Palm Beach School Board member Dr. Donna Robinson says she is pushing for the district’s tracker to update daily with as much information as possible, including how many students in a school have been absent. “Absenteeism will be important because that’s the first thing that’s going to happen if things go the wrong way,” she said. The majority of students in the dis

trict plan to continue distance learning when the schools reopen Monday.

Broward County Public Schools, targeting an Oct. 5 opening, already has a COVID-19 dashboard on its website, listing by school how many teachers and contractors are infected. When in-person learning begins, the district will add student cases, the website says.

Miami-Dade Public Schools says it will have its dashboard ready when face-to-face learning begins. The dashboard will show new cases by school.

Local COVID-19 dashboards come in the absence of a statewide school-level COVID-19 monitoring system for all K-12 public schools. They have come to play an important role in keeping parents aware of the spread of the virus. On Friday, the dashboards showed that more than 800 students and nearly 500 teachers/staff in Florida have become infected since districts opened for in-person learning on Aug. 10. Only half the districts report cases publicly.

Multiple methods of communication

While dashboards help understand what’s happening on a school level, learning about cases

on a classroom level will be more difficult.

Florida schools are not required to notify all parents in a class if a student has the virus; only those who were in close contact and need to quarantine.

In Palm Beach County, school board member Karen Brill advocates providing parents as much information as possible.

“Communication is key,” Brill said. “We will have our dashboard and we will communicate with parents any instance of someone in the school who gets COVID, not to alarm people but to make them diligent about watching for symptoms.” Brill said she wants notification provided to parents in multiple languages.

Most likely, South Florida parents will get an automated phone call when there’s a case in the school or the classroom and hear from the principal when their child needs to quarantine. Lisa Maxwell, executive director of Broward County Principals and Assistants Association, said she has been asking for information on the process since March, but has not received an answer from the school district. “Communication with parents is important, we have to have a systemic approach that will work,” she said. Broward County health officials say they have 538 contact tracers and will assist schools as needed.

In Collier County, the system for notification has been demanding

for school staff who scour seating charts and class schedules to figure out student contacts.

“When there are positive cases, the principals start calling parents of students who have been in close contact with those students ... that’s hard work and it’s trying,” said Stephanie Lucarelli, a Collier County School Board member “They are letting parents know they have to pick up their child and he needs to stay home two weeks. Some parents get angry because their kid is doing what he is supposed to do and now he is in quarantine.”

Controlling spread

Within a school, a single case of the new coronavirus can lead to dozens of other children and staff forced to quarantine. If a teacher has a child in another classroom, or a student has siblings in another class, those in contact with them might also need to isolate. Dr. Robinson on the Palm Beach School Board said she has recommended students also stay home and quarantine if they have been in an enclosed space such as the media center — with someone infected.

In Brevard County, the 19 recent cases of COVID-19 in the schools has led to 204 people being quarantined, according to the district dashboard.

Lucarelli in Collier said her district’s dashboard helps ease parents’

fears about outbreaks. “If a lot of students are out on quarantine, that doesn’t mean they are positive,” Lucarelli said. “Without the dashboard, parents would think there are more cases than there are.”

In Tampa, a mother of teenagers with Safe Schools, Safe Community said South Florida parents can expect inconsistency in the tracking of cases and how much they learn about what’s happening in their child’s school.

“Some schools do a better job than others ... it comes down to resources,” said Demaris Allen. “At my child’s school I know I am going to get a phone call if there’s a case. Parents at other schools are finding out well after the fact, and sometimes from another parent.”

Not all tracking goes smoothly

Tampa teacher Jessica Harrington, a Democratic candidate for the state House, said she has seen problems since the Hillsborough schools opened. The issues range from a lag in cases appearing on the district dashboard, to slow contact tracing, to parents moving their children in and out of in-person learning, she said.

“The numbers are a lot higher than what the tracker is saying,” Harrington said. “They want to give parents and teachers a sense of security but they are telling the school to call the state first to let them verify the case before they tell parents. Bureaucracy is stalling the numbers.”

Harrington said no one realized the high volume of children who would be home in quarantine and how that could affect the case count. “There is no requirement to test those kids during quarantine so we have no way of knowing if they contracted the virus,” she said.

Along with quarantines, parents should expect to find isolation rooms at their child’s school where a school nurse will treat anyone with symptoms until a parent arrives to take them home.

And, if South Florida follows national trends, students may encounter other disruptions to inperson learning. In some states, outbreaks within schools have led to temporary school closures.

“It has happened at schools that opened in August, and it is still happening now,” said Dan Domenech, executive director of The School Superintendents Association.

Domenech said parents and schools both need to keep each other informed. “If we see an environment where students are getting sick in school or at home and it’s not being reported, that’s only making matters worse,” he said.