Tennessee Department of Education to start reporting the number of COVID-19 cases in DeKalb Schools weekly

September 4, 2020
By: Dwayne Page

If you want to know how many active cases of COVID-19 are in the DeKalb County School District or any other system in the state that information will be available starting next week.

The Tennessee Department of Education will launch a new dashboard on Tuesday that will include the total number of active cases among students and staff broken down by school across the state.

The department will update the dashboard every Monday with the previous week’s number of new cases and will include classroom or school closures and whether students are learning in-person, remotely or a hybrid of both for each district.

“Parents and community members are working to make informed decisions, and we have determined the best path that balances informed decision making with our obligation to student privacy,” Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn said in a statement. “We believe this resource will not only help parents but will inform how COVID-19 is affecting student attendance, chronic absenteeism and overall student attainment.”

The sharing of student information is stringently protected under the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and protecting personally identifiable information of our youngest Tennesseans is critically important. To ensure protections of individual privacy, schools with fewer than 50 students will not be reported in the dashboard. For schools reporting under five positive student or employee COVID-19 cases, the school will be listed without a specific number of cases for the category.

At the district level, the dashboard will provide district-reported information on the number of new positive COVID-19 cases amongst students, the number of new positive COVID-19 cases amongst staff, and the primary operating model for schools within the district, including the number of schools conducting in-person learning, the number of schools conducting remote learning, and the number of schools utilizing a hybrid approach for instruction. In addition, the dashboard will display whether the district has adopted a critical infrastructure designation for certain workers, as well as a link to the district’s Continuous Learning Plan (CLP) which outlines how the district plans to administer remote learning.

At the school level, the dashboard will provide district-reported information on the number of new positive COVID-19 cases amongst students, number of new positive COVID-19 cases amongst staff, and whether adjustments from the district’s primary operating model have been made within the school. Students and staff listed as positive does not necessarily indicate they contracted COVID-19 at the school building.

Users will have two ways to access information:

A map view— An interactive map of the state of Tennessee will enable users to hover over their county or region and select their school to reveal more information.

And a menu view—A drop-down menu will allow users to quickly select a particular district of interest to reveal more information.

To protect individual privacy, schools with fewer than 50 students are not reported in this data. Further, for schools reporting a number that is fewer than five positive student or employee COVID-19 cases, the school will be listed without a specific number of cases for the category.

Of the state’s 147 school districts, 145 are open for the school year with the remaining two beginning their school year on September 8. The department will be working closely with districts to support their reporting and encourage them to update information on a weekly basis. Districts will receive instructions for reporting this information to the department as well as technical assistance when needed.

For access to additional resources related to reopening schools, visit the Tennessee Department of Education’s Reopening webpage: https://www.tn.gov/education/health-and-safety/update-on-coronavirus/reopening-guidance.html.

September 3, 2020
By: Dwayne Page

The DeKalb County Board of Education will re-organize when it convenes in regular monthly session Thursday night, September 10 at 7 p.m. at the DCHS cafeteria. A work session will be held prior to the meeting at 6 p.m. Social distancing guidelines will be observed. Masks will be worn and other CDC procedures will be followed.

Each September the Board names a chairman, vice chairman, and a Tennessee Legislative Network Representative to serve for the ensuing year.

The sitting officers are Chairman Danny Parkerson, Vice Chairman Shaun Tubbs, and TLN Representative Jim Beshearse.

This will also be the first meeting for new school board members Jamie Cripps from the 5th district and Jason Miller from the 6th district.

The agenda is as follows:
*Re-organization of the Board
*School updates and or committee reports
*Personnel Report from the Director of Schools
*Any another business from the Board member that may properly come before the Board.

The consent agenda is as follows:
*Approval to utilize the electronic check signing and present signatures until there is an update
*Approval of the Contract for Audit of Activity and Cafeteria Funds for the Fiscal Year ending June 30, 2020
*Consider and act on 2020-21 budget amendments to the Federal Programs Consolidated Funding Applications.
ESSER Cares Grant budget amendment #1

September 3, 2020
By: Dwayne Page

A total of six people have died in DeKalb County with COVID-19 according to the Tennessee Department of Health.

DeKalb County’s confirmed and probable number of COVID-19 cases now totals 482 overall with 130 active and 6 deaths.

As of Wednesday , September 2 there had been a total of 6,650 tests with 6,168 negative results and 482 positive and 6 deaths. A total of 346 persons tested positive since March have recovered.

The DeKalb County Health Department’s testing hours are Monday-Friday from 9am to 12 NOON every day.