State releases COVID-19 school data
Online dashboard tracks numbers
School districts in Shelby County are reporting COVID-19 cases to the state, but just how many cases have been associated with the school is unclear. Of data available for the current week, there were at least 37 cases reported among the municipal districts.
A dashboard, included in a Wednesday tweet by Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, shows cases by school and district. Currently, the data is not up-to-date for each district in the state. The case counts are separated for “this week” and “last week,” but do not include cumulative cases reported over time.
Set to publish Tuesday, the dashboard was not clearly visible online by the end of the day. In a statement Tuesday night, the Tennessee Department of Education said that the delay was “due to technical difficulties with processing data across a number of school districts.” Though it intended to launch the dashboard by week's end, according to the statement, full reporting by each district is not expected until Sept. 22.
Below are the totals for each school district in Shelby County, per the state data:
Arlington Community Schools: As of Monday at 12:03 p.m., the district had less than 5 cases reported among
students “this week” and 0 cases among staff. Data at the school level shows the case(s) were only reported at Arlington High School. The district did not report cases for the “last week” category.
Bartlett City Schools: As of Friday at 3:35 p.m., the district had less than 5 cases reported among students “this week” and less than 5 cases reported among staff. School-level data was only available for Appling Middle School, which had no cases reported. The district did not report cases for the “last week” category.
Collierville Schools: As of Tuesday at 2:48 p.m., the district had 26 cases reported among students “this week” and 6 cases among staff. School-based data shows the following schools reported cases this week:
● Bailey Station Elementary School: <5 among staff
● Collierville Elementary School: <5 among students
● Collierville High School: 19 among students, <5 among staff
● Collierville Middle School: <5 among students
● Schilling Farms Elementary
School: <5 among staff
● Tara Oaks Elementary School: <5 among staff; The district did not report cases for the “last week” category.
Germantown Municipal School District: District Superintendent Jason Manuel and spokesperson Kate Crowder told The Commercial Appeal the district reported information to the state Department of Education on Friday. At the time, they said, the district had reported less than 5 cases among students and no cases among faculty.
The dashboard, however, only shows data as of Aug. 4 at 7 p.m. The dashboard does not show school-level data or data for the “last week” category.
Lakeland School System: As of Friday at 3:38 p.m., the district had no cases reported among students “this week” and no cases reported among staff. The district did not report cases for the “last week” category.
Millington Municipal Schools: As of Friday at 1:58 p.m., the district had less than 5 cases reported among students “this week” and less than 5 cases among staff. No school-level data was available. The district did not report cases for the “last week” category.
The Achievement School District, the state-run district with most of its school in Memphis, and Shelby County Schools did not report any data for “this week” or “last week.” Though many of the schools are virtual-only, including all of SCS’ traditional schools, some charter schools within each district are teaching in-person courses. Staff for many of the schools have returned to buildings.
Schwinn’s tweet with the link to the dashboard was in reply to a thread discussing whether or not communities across Tennessee had seen rises in case counts since schools reopened for the fall.
“In TN, we’re seeing approx. 6-9 schools closed (of 1,350 opened in-person) at any given time. We also just rolled out a dashboard to track cases at the district and school levels. Our districts have done a great job taking as many precautions as possible,” Schwinn wrote.
Wednesday afternoon, the state issued a press release about the dashboard, acknowledging data was input for most but not all districts.
“During this first week of reporting, a majority of districts have submitted information for the dashboard,” according to the release. “Over the coming weeks, the department will be working closely with districts to support their reporting and encourage them to update information on a weekly basis. Districts have received instructions for reporting this information to the department and the department will continue to provide technical assistance to districts when needed.”
The department also reminded the public that reporting a case associated with a school does not necessarily indicate that the virus was contracted at the school building.
When announcing the dashboard, the department said it would update every Monday with the previous week’s number of new cases and would include classroom or school closures and whether students are learning in-person, remotely or a hybrid of both for each district.
The announcement came after the state flip-flopped for more than a month on whether releasing such data violates federal privacy laws.
The state’s new dashboard will be maintained by education department officials and school districts will be expected to update the department weekly. The state will not report specific case numbers for schools with less than 50 students enrolled — there are less than 40 of those statewide — and will not report the specific number of cases if the active case number is less than five.
The education department routinely redacts student demographic or test data when it only applies to small numbers of students as a way to protect privacy.
Department officials anticipate local school districts will likely still have the most up-to-date information on active cases in their schools and encourage families and community members to continue to reach out to local districts for more information.
Tennessean reporter Meghan Mangrum contributed.
Laura Testino covers education and children’s issues for the Commercial Appeal. Reach her at laura.testino@commercialappeal.com or 901-512-3763. Find her on Twitter: @Ldtestino
The department also reminded the public that reporting a case associated with a school does not necessarily indicate that the virus was contracted at the school building.