’We’ll be transparent’: Fort Mill schools join Rock Hill with real time COVID numbers
Fort Mill is the next area school district to venture into real time public data on how widespread COVID-19 is in its public schools.
The Fort Mill School District now has an online dashboard that shows how many students and staff members tested positive for the coronavirus. It also shows how many cases there are in quarantine. The listing mirrors what the Rock Hill School District created last week, just ahead of the first full day of school there.
The online COVID-19 listing for Fort Mill went live on Friday. It shows three student and four staff positive tests. Earlier in the week, the school board talked of heightened in interest in the school community about coronavirus and a desire to reduce misinformation.
“We’ve had a lot of questions from parents about, ‘I heard there was a case here or there and I didn’t see anything,’” said superintendent Chuck Epps.
Like the Rock Hill dashboard, the Fort Mill version will differ from data now put out twice weekly from the state Department of Health and Environmental Control. Epps said the task in Fort Mill is to have the most accurate, local information, the quickest.
“We’ll be transparent as far as we’re concerned,” he said.
Why are there two sets of COVID school numbers?
On Tuesday and Friday of each week, DHEC updates statewide figures on schools. Those figures involve positive COVID-19 cases for students and staff at public, private and charter schools.
The Fort Mill and Rock Hill dashboard data will be more extensive, since they also include isolation and quarantine figures.
Quarantine means a student or staff member may have been exposed to coronavirus, or is a recent close contact of someone who tested positive. Isolation means there are symptoms, or someone doesn’t have symptoms but did test positive for the virus that leads to COVID-19.
“We’re going to be clearing up a lot of that,” Epps said. “That’s where all the confusion with the parents is coming on those two, the definition of those terms.”
Another reason the state and local numbers may differ is lag time. The state updates two days a week, and a positive test from late Monday may not show up on the Tuesday report. The local dashboards update as cases arise. Epps said the state has a major challenge as it keeps track of and updates every school in the state. Fort Mill can focus instead on its own figures.
“The challenge with their report is, we call them every day,” Epps said. “We give them our numbers. We don’t know how long it’s going to take them to get up to snuff to make theirs completely accurate across the state.”
There could be reporting discrepancies between the formats too. Days after DHEC released data that shows at least one positive case at Oakdale Elementary School in Rock Hill, for instance, the Rock Hill dashboard doesn’t list a positive case there.
DHEC data comes from schools but also can come from doctor’s offices or test events. It could include a student who participates in a virtual academy at a district and wouldn’t be on the local dashboard since virtual students aren’t included there.
Leaders in both Fort Mill and Rock Hill say the local dashboards give the clearest picture available for virus spread in their schools.
“While there is no reason to believe the DHEC data set is not accurate, the information on our dashboard is updated daily,” said Mychal Frost, public information officer for the Rock Hill district.
Still another difference in the data will become evident in time.
“It’ll be a real time look at who’s quarantined, who’s isolated,” Epps said. “Now people will go on and off of that list when they come out of quarantine.”
The DHEC figures will be cumulative.
School district responsibility with COVID
For school districts, reporting coronavirus cases is just part of the task. The Fort Mill school board spoke at length this week on new duties for schools related to the virus. There are protocols for when parents receive word of positive tests, quarantine or isolation scenarios based on how close a contact their students are.
When students are close contacts, parents will know within 24 hours and typically before the next school day begins.
“As soon as (schools) know them, those letters are going out,” said Grey Young, executive director of students services for the district. “Especially for the classroom contacts, because we know who’s in the classroom.”
Districts perform contact tracing to determine what students outside the classroom, like participants on a sports team, may need notification. Students or staff could contract the virus at school, or they could contract it elsewhere and bring it into the school setting.
“Our responsibility is when one occurs in a school setting, whether it’s a family member or an actual student or employee, to then do our own internal contact tracing and notification,” said board Chairwoman Kristy Spears.
Board members want as clear a picture as possible with COVID-19 data, but they don’t want to alarm. It’s important, members said, for people to understand what figures mean for quarantine.
“It’s just incredibly important to understand that these people are not diagnosed with it,” said board member Tom Audette. “They’re not currently sick.”
As of Friday morning the DHEC data didn’t show any positive cases within the Fort Mill school district. DHEC planned a new release Friday afternoon.
