What schools in North Texas can report about COVID-19 infections

On the seventh day of school at Allen School District Chandler Elementary School, Principal Bobbie Allen alerted families that there was a positive case of COVID-19 on campus.

“Although school districts are no longer required to notify families of positive cases in their schools, in order to maintain communication with our families we notify you that a positive case of covid-19 has been registered at Chandler school,” Allen’s letter to the families said.

Read also: Carrollton school closes due to multiple infections of covid-19

The Collin County Health Department will take over contact tracing to confirm cases, the school principal wrote.

But the letter raised more questions from mother Lauren Gómez.

Was there a confirmed case in your daughter’s or son’s classroom? Was it a child or a teacher? Was he wearing a mask? Were your children exposed to the virus?

“That email thing doesn’t make sense,” Gomez said.

“I’m not saying I don’t want to know. What I say is that they send an email if it is one case, and they send an email if there are 100 cases. The emails don’t really tell us anything. “

Gomez is not the only one to be confused about the way schools are alerting parents to positive cases on their campuses.

Parents often do not know how much information the authorities can disseminate.

The state and school districts have changed their directions in recent weeks, creating even more confusion.

The Allen School District, for example, updated its policy on Aug. 16 to send notification letters to an entire elementary school rather than to specific classrooms where a case has been confirmed.

Previously, the district updated a tabulator of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases once a week with information from the previous week, but recently it changed its procedure and began publishing new cases instantly “in an effort to be more transparent. ”Said David Hicks, spokesman for the Allen district.

Gomez is part of a group of Allen parents who protested the school district’s lack of prevention measures Monday.

He did not want to send his children to school in protest of the district’s back-to-school plan in hopes that it would improve its notification system, among other things.

“The Allen Independent School District will continue to notify parents of laboratory confirmed COVID-19 cases while protecting individual privacy in accordance with the requirements of FERPA (Student Privacy Act),” son Hicks, doing Note that the district follows the Texas Education Agency (TEA) guidelines.

The Dallas Morning News reviewed TEA and school district policies on COVID-19 case reporting.

Here’s what families can expect when a person at school tests positive for coronavirus:

Are schools required to notify families of a confirmed case of COVID-19 in their children’s classroom?

Yes. The new TEA regulation stipulates that public schools must notify their teachers, staff and families if there is a confirmed case of COVID-19 in the classroom or in any extracurricular activity in which that person has participated.

However, the TEA does not clarify what type of information should be included in the notification, so communication with families can vary widely.

Some districts may choose to alert parents when a case occurs in their child’s classroom; others, like the Allen, will be able to send alerts to the entire school.

How will I know if my child has been identified as a close contact?

Once a school learns that a person on campus has tested positive for coronavirus, the school must notify the local health department and submit a report to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Although the school district is not required to conduct contact tracing, per TEA rules, local health departments have the authority to do so.

Participation in these investigations is voluntary, but if the school learns that a student is a close contact, it must notify the child’s parents.

What privacy laws affect these notifications? Will I know the name of the sick person?

School districts can cite privacy policies by not releasing the name of the person who tested positive for COVID-19.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protects the privacy of students’ educational records.

In order to report COVID-19, school districts generally do not have to disclose the name of the student who has contracted the virus to other parents, according to the guidelines of the federal Department of Education.

“In most cases, it is sufficient to report that a person at school has been determined to have covid-19, rather than specifically identifying the student who is infected,” the regulation says.

Who keeps the COVID-19 case count in schools?

Each week the TEA and the state health department publish a spreadsheet with staff-student case totals for each public school and school district in the state.

However, this information is out of date, not updated at the moment.

Each school district may publish tabs with the most up-to-date information on its covid cases.

Find out what your school district’s prevention protocols are and if your school district has a tab here:

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