Florida schools reopening one month in – what we’ve learned
Bottom Line: It’s now been a full month since classroom education began throughout Florida. This includes classroom education taking place in South Florida through private institutions. While South Florida’s school districts still haven’t provided classroom education options – we now have a month’s worth of data to observe what has and hasn’t happened with those attending classes in-person.
- 1.1 million – the number of Students who’ve attended class in person according to the Florida Department of Education (about a third of the total K-12 student population)
- 10,959 Floridians under the age of 18 who’ve been diagnosed with COVID-19 since school reopening's (using data from the Florida Department of Health)
So, what can we infer from that information? There’s currently no way of knowing how many of those near 11,000 Floridians who’ve been diagnosed with the virus were attending classroom education...however consider this. Even if each of the kids diagnosed with the virus had attended classes only 0.009% of students would have contracted the virus. That’s what we’ve kept public schools closed for in South Florida. Now, it does appear that there’s be an increase related to reopening's. An average of 8,500+ Floridians under 18 had been diagnosed monthly prior to school reopening's – so we did see an increase of around 2,400 cases among these Floridians during the month. But here’s the question, is the damage being done to the health of students and parents worse? With 64% of students learning less in the virtual environment is it worth it? That’s for you to decide but it’s clear the most alarmist warnings didn’t come close manifesting into reality during the first month of classroom education in Florida.