I asked teachers on my personal Facebook Page and three other Facebook pages that have to do with local education if they were having cases of COVID at their schools that weren't making the dashboard. I received a few dozen responses and the answer to my question seems to be yes.
Several people that responded said their children were at charter schools and those cases weren't being reported. Now charter schools don't make the dashboard but that doesn't mean it isn't a problem. How is a parent supposed to make the most informed decision about their child's safety if they aren't getting the information?
Most of the people that replied said they knew of cases in district schools that weren't being reported.
I crossed referenced the people who reached out to me with the DCPS Covid dashboard and some of the schools had cases identified but some did not. It wasn't enough for me to point my finger and say DCPS is cooking the books after all an anecdote is not evidence, but what about a half dozen?
St John's County is a quarter of our size and reported 155 cases in one day.
Hillsborough, a little bigger than us, opened the same day as us and they are up to hundreds of cases and thousands of quarantines.
Speaking of quarantines the district seems to want to keep this is a secret.
My thought is we are barely quarantining anyone because our contact tracing is woeful, risking lives to keep seats in butts is acceptable to our administration, or both. I would love to be proven wrong but as somebody who has seen firsthand how bad it is, I don't think I will be.
https://www.mysuncoast.com/2021/08/16/manatee-school-board-mulling-mask-mandate/
Now I want to qualify all this. It's possible DCPS is reporting accurate numbers, that they are doing everything right, but you will forgive me if I have my doubts.
They didn't care about the numbahs last year. Why start now?
ReplyDeleteIt's all a charade. Think about it. We can't even agree on something as simple as wearing masks in school. Strongly recommended is not the same as required making the opt out clause meaningless. What's the point in social distancing or turning teachers into mask police when our leaders have failed us so completely?