How one Miami school for fragile children has kept its doors open and kept COVID away
This story is part of “Class of COVID-19,” a project from Miami Herald news partner WLRN and Florida Public Media. Find the whole series at classofcovid.org.
Every Monday, dozens of Early Beginnings Academy parents log on for a virtual town hall to get some face time with the small charter school’s principal.
During a recent event, one of the parents — an emergency room nurse at Jackson Memorial Hospital — shared her first-hand experience seeing the havoc COVID-19 wreaks on an infected person’s body.
Principal Makeesha Coleman said one reason she asked the nurse to speak to her fellow parents was to reinforce the importance of taking precautions: Avoid large groups. Wear masks. Take the virus seriously.
Coleman said two parents of students at the school have died from COVID-19. So far, though, there hasn’t been a positive case among students or staff members — except one over the summer, when the campus was closed, according to Coleman. Miami-Dade County Public Schools does not report positive cases at charter schools on its district-wide dashboard.
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Coleman needs to keep cases at zero. All of her 130 students have disabilities, and about a quarter of them are medically fragile.
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This story was originally published February 15, 2021 at 5:00 AM.