Virginia Parents Create Dashboards to Track COVID Numbers
As students return to school amid a second 2021 surge in COVID cases, parents have taken to tracking school exposure data for themselves.
by Kristin Reed
UPDATED: 5pm, 9/16/2021 — We are extremely excited to announce that since publication of this document, CCPS has expanded its dashboard, and RPS has launched a limited Dashboard. Scroll down for a complete list of COVID dashboards by school district.
Virginia is now 3 months in to its state-sponsored mandate for in-person learning. As schools prepare to reopen for fall 2021, that mandate will test public infrastructure for exposure mitigation in the context of an invigorated spread spurred both by a hasty summer end to the state’s mask mandate and the emergence of the Delta Variant.
The mandate itself may prove controversial as educators find their districts cannot easily shift to fully virtual learning as they did in 2020. The bill’s broad support in the state legislature is a sign of the ongoing influence of Virginia’s far right governing coalition on the Democratic party, despite its hold on the Governorship and both arms of state government. The bill’s sponsor, Siobhan Dunnavant, is no friend to public education or to public workers, having received a failing grade by both the Virginia Education Association and the state AFL-CIO.
The toll of COVID-19 on our public education workforce is unclear. While the state has re-launched its state dashboard on COVID cases, district-level reporting of cases, quarantines, and deaths are uneven and tensely debated. Some districts have worked to create clear dashboards of public health indicators in the district, but others have been reluctant to do so. In Richmond, the death of a bus driver was reported to the School Board and not flagged for public release by Administration, a choice questioned by Kenya Gibson, who released the information on social media. The family of the worker took to digital public comment to state their frustration with the lack of transparency from the district:
The news of this driver’s death and the ensuing Family testimony to the Board sparked a tense debate on social media about district-level responsibilities to report cases and deaths publicly, and highlighted a stark contrast between the experience of workers and their families as they negotiate public health needs against the public image of districts.
As districts struggle to meet public needs for data transparency during COVID, and trust falters among core district-level stakeholders, parents and community members have taken to tracking their own data.
Districts with no dashboards: Richmond
UPDATE: as of 9/10/21 RPS maintains a directory of positive cases here.
Richmond City Public Schools is one of 8 districts in the state to maintain no public-facing dashboards of COVID cases. Our state’s capital city was also its only city to remain fully-virtual for the whole of the 2020/2021 school year. This makes it the sole district with a full 18th months to address building-level needs for air filtration and distancing requirements. Despite this, Richmond’s sole charter school, which operates on a year-round schedule, has been a high-profile case study for elementary school spread in the context of the Delta Variant. Parent advocacy on twitter led to a parent-managed dashboard of case reporting in both the building and classroom levels.
As the full district gears up for fall return with no district-managed dashboard available, a full district-wide dashboard—also parent managed—has emerged to track cases across Richmond Public Schools.
Limited Dashboards: Chesterfield
UPDATE: Since publication Chesterfield has expanded its COVID case dashboard here.
While Chesterfield County Schools does maintaining a public dashboard, it has limited information on display for tracking over time. One of the most detailed resident dashboards of COVID spread throughout a district is certainly Chesterfield Project Restart: by the Numbers, a parent and resident-maintained project with a wealth of data that sets CCPS in context with the surrounding County.
Chesterfield Project Restart has also launched a popular Facebook page with daily snapshots and public health information. Like many districts, Chesterfield returned to hybrid learning in 2021; its earlier return and its proximity to Richmond have made it a closely-watched district for Richmond area educators and parents.
EDIT: There is now also a “COVID at CCPS” site, tracking locations and cases across the district.
Are there more?
According to NBC 12’s reporting in March, eight districts currently maintain no public-facing dashboard of COVID cases. Other districts, like Chesterfield County, maintain dashboards that are far more limited than those managed by residents. Do you know of citizen tracking in these districts? If so, let us know! We’ll add those to this post.
COVID Dashboards by District:
Albermarle County Public Schools
Amelia County Public Schools
- No COVID-19 dashboard
Caroline County Public Schools
Charlottesville Public Schools
Chesterfield County Public Schools
Clarke County Public Schools
Colonial Heights Public Schools
Cumberland County Public Schools
- No COVID-19 dashboard
Dinwiddie County Public Schools
- No COVID-19 dashboard
Fluvanna County Public Schools
Fredericksburg City Schools
- District Dashboard (referrer noted that it may be incomplete or out of date)
Green County Public Schools
Goochland County Public Schools
Hanover County Public Schools
- District Dashboard
- Safe Return to Learn — Hanover Facebook page
Henrico County Public Schools
Hopewell City Public Schools
Louisa County Public Schools
- No COVID-19 dashboard
New Kent County Public Schools
- No COVID-19 Dashboard
Nottoway County Public Schools
- No COVID-19 dashboard
Petersburg Public Schools
- No COVID-19 dashboard
Powhatan County Public Schools
Prince George County Public Schools
Richmond Public Schools
- District-maintained list of positive cases
- COVID in RPS
- COVID cases at Patrick Henry Elementary School
Spotsylvania County Public Schools
Kristin Reed is a faculty member in General Education at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she serves on the steering committee for VCU’s chapter of United Campus Workers. She co-founded of Richmond For All as a campaign lead for the fight against the Dominion Coliseum in 2018. Today she co-chairs the organization’s Public Education Campaign Committee.
