With COVID cases on the rise for kids, will KC-area schools make virus data public?

Now that school has resumed for most Kansas City-area students, many parents rightly want to know: How will district officials inform the public about coronavirus cases?

To their credit, officials in the Raymore-Peculiar, Independence and Park Hill school districts have launched online portals that report the number of coronavirus cases within individual schools and other pertinent information.

But other districts are not providing those same crucial updates.

Blue Springs, Platte County, North Kansas City, Belton, Grandview and Lee’s Summit are among the districts that have not made similar coronavirus data publicly available.

Transparency is needed to slow infection rates, which are rising fast among Missouri children compared to the state’s adult population, according to a joint report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

From Aug. 20 to Sept. 3, the report found, the rate of infection for children in Missouri between ages 0-19 grew more than 30% — one of the largest and most concerning increases in the country. More than 12,500 children have tested positive, according to data from the state health department.

While children and adolescents are less likely to suffer complications or severe symptoms, the risk of community spread is significant.

Area schools have struggled mightily to develop reopening plans since the pandemic forced districts to consider alternative learning options for students. Some chose in-person classes, while others opted for in-person and online hybrid models. Hickman Mills and Raytown decided all virtual learning was the safest way to start the school year.

Not so surprisingly, at least seven people at Raymore-Peculiar High School have tested positive for COVID-19 since Aug. 30. Six students and one teacher were diagnosed with the coronavirus, according to the district’s online portal.

All told, 23 staff members, teachers and students in the district have been infected since July 5. Advisory lessons on the topic are planned for secondary students. Few, if any, policy adjustments are planned.

“We are not changing protocols or procedures, because in the review of these cases, it has become clear that these cases are occurring outside of school,” a district spokesperson said. “We have zero transmission within the schools.”

To its credit, Raymore-Peculiar has been transparent about the number of cases within a school building.

Liberty has an online portal in the works, as does North Kansas City and Excelsior Springs. Lee’s Summit hasn’t decided, and Blue Springs will send a weekly report to families providing the number of confirmed positive cases within a school.

There is no excuse for Center, Blue Springs or other districts not to offer a portal to report positive cases. Districts around the state are delivering daily or weekly reports to families and updating online dashboards with the latest positive test results and other information such as quarantine counts.

Detailed narratives are included in online reports issued by Springfield Public Schools.

“In terms of communication, we are managing positive cases in partnership with the Kansas City Health Department as they come in and are communicating based on recommendations,” a spokeswoman for the Center district said.

Some school administrators are putting public health at risk by withholding this essential data. As Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told The New York Times, disease control is more difficult if schools fail to notify the public.

“You don’t scare people by telling them what’s going on,” Jha said. “You scare them by hiding information.”