Are there COVID-19 cases in your South Florida school? Here’s how to check
South Florida students are back in the classroom for socially distanced learning and there are many new changes to help keep them, their family and their teachers safe from COVID-19.
Teachers, students and staff have COVID-19 health screening questionnaires they are expected to answer every day before they go to school, everyone is required to wear a mask at all times, and each school has an isolation room.
Yet, even with all the precautions, someone who is ill with the disease, even without symptoms, could potentially expose others to it.
At least two Miami-Dade County Public School students tested positive for COVID-19 during the first week of schools reopening for in-person learning, similar to other school districts in Florida. A charter school student in Miami-Dade also tested positive for the disease that week.
Several universities in South Florida and the rest of the state are continuing to report new cases among students, faculty and staff.
Miami-Dade, Broward and Monroe County Public Schools and several Florida universities have created COVID-19 dashboards to track the number of confirmed cases among students and employees.
Here’s how parents, students and faculty can check their school’s COVID-19 status. And remember, this just means the person was recently at the school or is affiliated with the school — it does not necessarily mean they fell ill there.
How to check if my Miami-Dade or Broward school has COVID-19 cases
▪ Miami-Dade County Public Schools Coronavirus Dashboard: This dashboard tracks the number of employees and students who have tested positive for the disease as of Oct. 5, the first day of in-person learning at Miami-Dade public schools. The dashboard will not include online-only students or employees who are not working on campus.
“The dashboard is programmed to look for new data several times per day and will be updated when the new data is found with confirmed cases only,” said Miami-Dade County Public Schools.
You can see the district’s cumulative case count for employees and students and how many were confirmed in the past 30 days. The dashboard also has a search option to break down the cases by school, including the “30-day trend” and “positive cases over time” charts, the district said.
The district said employee cases are added if they are self-reported or confirmed by the Florida Department of Health. Student cases, including those that are self-reported, are added as they are confirmed by the Florida Department of Health.
To see the dashboard, visit reopening.dadeschools.net and click COVID-19 Dashboard near the top of the page.
▪ Broward County Public Schools COVID-19 Dashboard: This dashboard shows how many confirmed COVID-19 cases have been self-reported to the school district in the last 30 days at school and administrative sites.
These are people who tested positive and were recently at a Broward Schools campus or facility. The confirmed cases are reported by the individual, the student’s parent or by the Florida Department of Health. The dashboard updates every Tuesday and Friday.
On the first-day of in-person learning at Broward schools, the dashboard already had recorded positive cases in the last 30 days.
The dashboard breaks down the cases by location and tells you how many of those cases were employees, students and contractors.
Another thing to keep in mind when looking at this dashboard: The school district said some people who test positive visited multiple district locations, which can cause the location count to exceed the total positive case count.
To see the dashboard, visit https://www.browardschools.com/Page/55422
How to check if my school in the Florida Keys has COVID-19 cases
▪ Monroe County Public Schools COVID-19 Dashboard: This dashboard tracks the number of employees and students who have tested positive for the disease as of Aug. 31 at Monroe County public schools.
The confirmed cases are listed on the dashboard by location and whether the person is considered a student, teacher or another staff member of the district.
You can see the district’s cumulative case count for employees, students and staff or use the search option to break down the cases by school. The dashboard is updated every Wednesday and Friday, according to the district.
To see the dashboard, visit www.keysschools.com and click COVID-19 Dashboard under the MCSD COVID-19 Response tab.
▪ School Report for Florida by the Department of Health
This report is updated every Tuesday and shows how many confirmed COVID-19 cases statewide have been tied to Florida’s K-12 and post-secondary schools, including charter, religious and private schools. The report breaks down the cases by school, if the person had symptoms, and if they are a student, teacher, staff member or if it is still unknown.
Some caveats: The report is missing some schools, does not include cases that were confirmed in August, and sometimes its data does not match the numbers reported by the school district’s individual COVID-19 dashboard.
To see the report, visitfloridahealthcovid19.gov, scroll down and click “School Report for Florida — Summary of COVID-19 Cases Associated with Primary and Secondary Schools.”
How to check if my Florida university has COVID-19 cases?
Public school districts in Florida aren’t the only ones letting families track COVID-19 cases in the classrooms. Some universities have created their own dashboards too. Some dashboards update daily, others weekly. Some only show recent positive cases, others also include a cumulative total.
Here are some of the university dashboards available:
▪ Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University — http://www.famu.edu/index.cfm?reopeningplan
▪ Florida International University — https://repopulation.fiu.edu/health-safety/university-covid-19-cases/index.html
▪ Florida Memorial University — https://www.fmuniv.edu/dashboard/
▪ Florida State University — https://www.fsus.school/covid
▪ University of Central Florida — https://www.ucf.edu/coronavirus/
▪ University of Florida — https://coronavirus.ufhealth.org/screen-test-protect-2/about-initiative/testing-dashboard/
▪ University of Miami — https://coronavirus.miami.edu/dashboard/
This article was updated on Oct. 26 with additional information.
This story was originally published October 8, 2020 at 4:37 PM.
