Norfolk schools reverse course, will go public if staffers get coronavirus
Norfolk Public Schools has decided to tell the public when staffers test positive for the coronavirus after all.
After initially saying last week the district wouldn't disclose whether it had cases to protect employees' medical privacy, spokeswoman Barbara Hunter said this week officials changed their minds. For the first two weeks of school, there were no reported cases, she said.
Norfolk was the only Hampton Roads school district that would not disclose even citywide data on the number of reported cases. But no others are naming the schools where staff have tested positive, despite citing no legal rationale for withholding the information.
The unwillingness to disclose even district-wide case numbers angered some Norfolk parents, prompting one to create a petition criticizing the secrecy and asking for more transparency. Michele Gardner, who has two children attending the Academy for Discovery and Lakewood, said the district's rationale — that it couldn't share the number of cases to protect employee's medical privacy — didn't make sense to her.
“I know that that aggregate data can be disclosed,” Gardner said. “The lie really bothered me because then it's a trust issue … And you're asking me to trust you with the most precious people in my life.”
Her kids' schools have disclosed when there's lice or an uptick in flu cases, and Gardner said she doesn't see a difference between that and when people test positive for coronavirus. If there weren't any positive cases, the district should have just said so, she said.
“The secrecy instills fear where there may not even need to be fear,” Gardner said.
Fifteen Hampton Roads school employees reported positive for the virus that causes COVID-19 during the second week of school, up from 13 during the first week. Norfolk is the only district without cases so far.
Information about positive cases in schools has been limited and inconsistent from district to district since the pandemic started, but for much of that time, schools were closed to personnel and students, effectively minimizing the risk of transmission.
But many teachers returned to school buildings in late August, and this week, students in Chesapeake and Virginia Beach began returning to the classroom.
Norfolk decided to disclose district-level data “to align with the reporting of the region's other school divisions,” Hunter said in an email Thursday.
The Virginia Department of
Health tracks outbreaks — two or more positive cases — in “educational facilities” but doesn't report the specific locations of those outbreaks. That makes it impossible for the public to know whether a reported outbreak is in a K-12 school, a college or a childcare center.
Legislation that would require the disclosure of cases at schools and other group facilities passed the House and Senate unanimously during the special session and could become law next month.
Gardner said she'd like to see public school districts follow colleges' lead and report case information on online dashboards. So far, just Chesapeake has a dashboard for public reporting; it's limited, but the district posts the number of new student or staff cases once a week.