Concerns Over EVSC Covid-19 Case Transparency

Concerns Over EVSC Covid-19 Case Transparency

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Tonight - many wondering if - the evansville vanderburgh school corporation should reveal all positive covid-19 cases to the community.

This is the current battle between teachers, parents and the school district.

44news reporter marisa patwa is in evansville with more on what the future holds --- for tracking covid-19 cases in the district.

Teachers and parents are angry -- saying evsc is not being transparent enough about the amount of covid-19 cases in the schools --- only being notified if they have been in close contact with the virus meaning a teacher could be leading a lesson plan with a positive student in a spaced out classroom and not even know it.

"i just feel like it's information parents and the community should know because you know if they don't tell us any cases, by the time it gets too big, then we're all going to be surprised when they shutdown."

Now i spoke with evsc spokesperson jason woekbenberg and he says while he understands the community wanting to know each positive case in every building -- releasing that kind of information starts to become tricky because they don't want to violate hippa.

"we've been very committed to the beginning to ensure that people's privacy is respected.

So we never want to reveal any information that would identify some individual whether they are a child or adult if they've tested positive.

But certainly we are very committed to informing those people who need to know."

Which evsc says is someone who spends fifteen minutes within six feet of someone positive --- including teachers -- "because they play a vital role in that contract tracing.

They know where students are, they know where they're moving, they know what the seating chart is.

So, they help the covid team to determine if there is a possible close contact.

Our goal is that we don't have close contacts because of the way we've structured all of our learning spaces with social distancing."

But for those wanting more positive case data on the whole school district -- evsc says they are waiting on guidance from the state department of health on a new dashboard to track cases.

"we're eager to see how that's going to look.

We actually have several questions that we don't have answers to yet but we understand they are extremely busy and rolling this out across the state.

Actually we are in the process as we speak of finding out what information is needed for that dashboard and how that would look.

And again, we would definitely want to make sure that however that dashboard looks, it would protect individuals privacy."

According to the indiana health commissioner, the new dashboard would require two representatives from each school to update it daily.

Reporting in evansville marisa patwa 44news