Coronavirus in Tampa Bay schools: What we've learned, and still don't know - Tampa Bay Times

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When it comes to the coronavirus, schools are at a crossroads.

Reported cases are increasing — gradually, but steadily, from one week to the next.

At the same time, schools are under pressure to resume in-person instruction under pre-pandemic conditions.

Until now there have been no major outbreaks in Hernando, Hillsborough, Pasco or Pinellas county schools. Public schools have been able to stay open through nearly 1,300 known cases, although class-by-class quarantines are a routine occurrence.

The common refrain: Behavior in the community, not in school, is spreading the virus that causes COVID-19.

But all bets are off if schools become more crowded at a time when cases are rising again around the nation and state.

“We’re going to be bringing back more students into the classrooms, so some of the distancing is going to shrink that we were enjoying," said Sara O’Toole, manager of student health services for the Pinellas County district, which has seen an uptick in cases in recent weeks.

"When you have to shrink in one safety measure you have to tighten others to keep that spread from happening,” she said.

• • •

It was big news on March 12 when Farnell Middle School in Westchase closed because of the coronavirus.

Somebody at the school had spent time with somebody who had been infected. Then, because people at the private Tampa Preparatory School had social relationships with people at Farnell, Tampa Prep closed a day later.

Fast forward seven months. Farnell has reported five cases since schools reopened on Aug. 31. Right next door, Bryant Elementary has had nine in the past two weeks.

Yet neither school closed.

Kim Von Burg sends her two children to Alonso High, which serves the same Westchase community as Bryant and Farnell. While cautious about COVID-19, Von Burg is thrilled with the way the school has handled the coronavirus crisis.

The assistant principal checks students for masks at the car line, she said. Students get cleaning wipes as they enter the classrooms. They scan their homework pages as PDF documents. They are spread safely around the campus for lunch.

“My daughter said that, in one class, she literally has more than 6 feet around her," Von Burg said. "There is nobody sitting in the first row. So if a teacher got sick, they have that buffer zone.”

Even some who opposed the reopening in July, when community infection rates were high, now have few complaints.

“They seem to be implementing the plan as best they can. It is the best we can do with what we’ve been given,” said Dr. Anne Lenz, a South Tampa endocrinologist who served on the Hillsborough School Board’s medical panel.

There have been some missteps. In Apollo Beach, a nurse practitioner said her child was overlooked for quarantine after she sat on a bus next to another child who had the virus. The schools use seating charts for contact tracing. But the system broke down and the parent said her child became ill as well.

Teacher Mary Hegarty addresses her class at Belmont Elementary in Hillsborough County on the first day of in-person school, Aug. 31, 2020. [ Hillsborough County School District ]

Tracye Brown, the Hillsborough district’s chief of climate and culture said, “this was an isolated incident and with all of these kinds of things, we take that feedback and we try to improve our process. We have reinforced with our bus drivers the importance of having kids adhere to the seating chart."

Overall, Brown and other administrators say they are pleased with the way their reopening plans are being implemented. They are relieved that they have not seen much resistance to the rules on face coverings, despite early threats of defiance and lawsuits.

“I am so proud of what I see when I walk through the schools,” Brown said. “The kids are doing a great job.”

Tracye Brown is chief of climate and culture for the Hillsborough County School District. [Twitter]

In Pasco, district spokesman Steve Hegarty agreed that students are generally cooperating with school instructions, as they want the schools to remain open. “There are still frustrations because school experience is not everything that it would be before we had COVID,” Hegarty said. But “for the most part people are happy to be in school and more people are going back to traditional school.”

• • •

What’s less clear is just how healthy everybody is.

Cases reported by the four districts, now about 200 a week, amount to less than 1 percent of all students and staff.

But there are several reasons to believe the numbers are not providing a full picture:

• Hillsborough’s daily online dashboard typically shows about as many staff as student cases — even though students outnumber staff by about 9 to 1.
• The case count is sometimes higher in Pasco than in Pinellas, a considerably larger district. One possible explanation is that Pasco has free testing sites in three of its schools.
• Income could affect how likely a child is to be tested. Of all of Hillsborough’s 250 schools, the three with the highest number of cases by far primarily serve families in higher income neighborhoods: Newsome and Plant High, with 28 and 27 cases respectively, and Steinbrenner High, with 21.

Quarantine numbers are also a mystery.

Pasco reports them clearly on its website, showing exact numbers of students and staff impacted. Pinellas reports whether a quarantine has affected a classroom, a partial classroom, a bus or a large group of students like a volleyball team. But numbers of students and staff are not included.

Hillsborough officials have declined to post any quarantine numbers, even though some parents badly want to see that data. The district says those numbers are too fluid and could be easily misunderstood.

When pressed at Tuesday’s School Board meeting for the day’s total, Brown told the audience that 2,142 students and 140 adults had been quarantined, but it is hard to say if that number is typical.

Von Burg, the Alonso High parent, said she believes families would be more responsible — and less likely to allow sleepover parties or other events that spread the virus — if they knew their schools might have to close.

On both sides of the bay, guiding families' out-of-school behavior has been a challenge.

“I think I have learned that there is a basic misunderstanding about what quarantine means,” said O’Toole, the Pinellas health services manager.

“Families will think that means that ‘my kids can’t come to school,’ but their kids will still show up at the football game on Friday night and they’ll still be at the mall. Quarantine means you should stay home and monitor yourself for symptoms."

• • •

Like so many aspects of the coronavirus, science and attitudes shift frequently.

Where there were passionate arguments in the summer about whether schools should re-open, educators and parents increasingly agree on the importance of physical school.

A class of fifth-grade students at Deltona Elementary in Spring Hill. [ Facebook ]

“I think most kids need the structure, the clear expectations that school gives, the social interaction,” O’Toole said.

But she rejects the notion that COVID-19 is harmless to healthy children.

“We don’t know anything about this disease,” she said. “So we don’t know what they’re going to be dealing with, maybe 10 or 20 or 30 years down the road. It breaks my heart to see young kids testing positive or being sick or entire volleyball teams who spread it to themselves.”

“I think I have learned that there is a basic misunderstanding about what quarantine means,” said Sara O’Toole, head of student health services in Pinellas County. [ Courtesy of Sara O'Toole ]

The idea that COVID-19 cannot hurt children is a common theme in Tallahassee, where Gov. Ron DeSantis has not let up in insisting that schools remain open.

“School closures should be off the table,” DeSantis said during an appearance last week in Jacksonville.

Teachers and administrators now wonder what the winter and spring will bring, and if they will be allowed to continue the virtual classes that, early in the school year, enrolled nearly half their students.

At Tuesday’s School Board meeting in Hillsborough, superintendent Addison Davis said he’s preparing for public pressure to bring most students back to school buildings. He is planning a marketing campaign in November and will ask parents if they would like to bring their children back even before the winter holidays.

“Right now we’re around 56, 57 percent,” Davis said, referring to the percentage of students attending in-person classes. But he believes that at 70 to 75 percent, the state is likely to maintain the district’s full funding.

“There’s got to be a push to get our children back into our schools because we know it is the best way for our children to learn,” Davis said.

Students arrive at Gulf Middle School in New Port Richey during the first day of classes in Pasco County in August. [ DOUGLAS R. CLIFFORD | Times ]

Parents are weighing that belief against the continued rise in coronavirus spread, which is projected to continue as flu season and the winter holidays converge.

Devika Srivastava, whose two sons are distance-learning through Madeira Beach Fundamental School, is worried that as students trickle into Pinellas school buildings, they will become unsafe.

“I don’t think they have the capability to run at full capacity right now,” she said.

“The only reason cases are so low is they are not running full capacity. How do you make sure as a teacher that 28 children are wearing masks? How do you manage social distancing 22 children in a class?”

That’s a question school officials are not fully answering right now, except to say they will do the best they can.

• • •

How schools handle the virus

Protocols vary slightly depending on the school district. Here is a broad overview:

1. The tracking of COVID-19 cases in Tampa Bay area schools relies on the honor system. There is no requirement that students or staff be tested in order to enter a campus. So the cases counted by districts are all self-reported. However, testing is strongly recommended when a student or employee shows symptoms or has been exposed to someone with the virus

2. After a student or employee is diagnosed and notifies the school, the school alerts district officials and the county health department.

3. Schools use seating charts and other information to determine who was exposed to the infected person. Generally, exposure is defined as being within 6 feet of an infected person for at least 15 minutes. The health department, using the information gathered by the school, conducts contact tracing. Officials notify those who were likely exposed and direct them to quarantine for 14 days and monitor their symptoms.

4. Everyone in the school not directly affected receives a notice alerting them to the existence of a COVID-19 case. Those notices are reflected in dashboards posted on school district websites.

5. No test result is required to come off quarantine or return to school after an illness, but students or staff must attest that they were fever-free for 72 hours without the use of fever reducers. The waiting period is 10 days after the appearance of symptoms or 14 days after exposure.

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