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Updated: Most Likely To Bring COVID-19 To The Classroom? Staff Not Students
Bottom Line: While South Florida’s School Districts continue to unlawfully impose school mask mandates without parental opts outs, I thought I’d revisit a story I’d received a lot of feedback on when I provided it originally. As the headline to the story suggests, we’ve started the year with a greater percentage of school district employees testing positive for COVID-19 than students. Each of South Florida’s school districts have had a far higher rate of COVID-19 infection among employees as compared to students. As part of my analysis, I took the current data available on each school district’s COVID-19 dashboard along with the current student and staff populations to produce the results. Here’s what I found (as of all data posted as of Tuesday):
- Broward
- 33,000 employees – 411 infections: 1.2%
- 271,000 students – 1161 infections: 0.4%
- Miami Dade
- 54,861 employees – 204 infections: 0.4%
- 350,000 students – 942 infections: 0.3%
- Palm Beach County
- 22,426 employees – 654 infections: 2.9%
- 176,724 students – 4293 infections: 2.4%
Employees in Broward have been three times more likely to have tested positive for COVID-19 as compared to students. In Miami-Dade, employees have tested positive at a 25% higher rate and in Palm Beach County employees have been testing positive at a 17% greater clip. I’ve had faculty suggest that perhaps the students are responsible for spreading it to the staff, which in some instances, may be possible. Conversely, in theory, with the district’s mask mandates that should be mitigated, correct? Secondly, going back to the first days of school, the rates were higher – indicating those testing positive had brought it to school with them. With school districts so intent on mandating masks for students that they’re suing the state to do it, perhaps they’d be better served focusing on their own employees.