Port Washington’s school district, after a petition drive by parents, said it will start notifying local families about COVID-19 infections among students and teachers at specific grade levels and schools.
Until now, many districts had acknowledged cases by school, without specifying grade levels.
The new notification policy, which takes effect Friday, was outlined in a district letter sent to parents earlier this week. The announcement followed a petition campaign by more than 400 parents urging the district to provide what they described as greater transparency.
The issue also was debated at a Sept. 21 board meeting.
Port Washington’s decision takes place at a time when the state has resumed posting numbers of students, teachers and other school staff infected with the virus on Long Island and in other regions across the state. A daily update released Thursday showed a total of 4,445 school-age individuals in Nassau and Suffolk counties testing positive since Sept. 1.
In Port Washington, Superintendent Michael Hynes told parents that grade-wide notification allowed them “the opportunity to monitor and make responsible decisions while still protecting individual student privacy.”
Petitioning parents had pushed the district to go a step further, by disclosing COVID-19 cases in individual classes, not just grade levels. However, some officials and parents acknowledged privately that notifications at class level could raise legal issues of personal privacy.
“This is just a personal opinion, but I think this is a step in the right direction,” said Rachel Pedicini, a Port Washington mother of two, referring to the new policy. “None of us have all the right answers, and we’re all just trying to get there.”
Pedicini, a digital merchandiser with children enrolled in first and third grade, led in organizing the petition effort.
According to the health department, reports from testing labs showed Port Washington with 51 positive cases among school-age residents, for a period beginning Sept. 1. The department also reported that records from the district itself showed 38 positive cases among students, 4 cases among teachers and 2 for other district employees, for the time period beginning Sept. 13.
The district enrolls about 5,300 students.
The state Department of Health released statewide results publicly on Monday for the first time, after upgrading its data system. Initial results showed Long Island with a total 3,923 cases among school-age individuals — numbers that since have increased.
Results also showed the Island ranked second after New York City in total number of cases, among 10 regions statewide. This might have been expected, given the large number of students enrolled in public schools in this region and the city.
The state’s approach in presenting data drew some protests from Long Islanders, who said this put too much emphasis on raw numbers, without proper perspective. Some critics said numbers would have been more meaningful, had they shown percentages of students and teachers infected.
“If someone were to say they had five cases in a school, I wouldn’t know how important that was,” said Ken Baron of East Northport, a software engineer who contacted Newsday to express concern with the numbers. “If there were only a total 10 kids in the entire school, that would be important. If it were five cases in a large school district, then I would not be very concerned, because it would not be widespread.”
In response, health department officials referred Newsday to COVID-19 infection rates that it tabulated by region for all persons tested, not specifically for students. The latest rate for positive tests on Long Island was 3.3%, based on a seven-day average. This was the third-lowest among calculations for 10 regions of the state, and higher only than the 2.7% calculated for the Mid-Hudson region and 1.6% for New York City.
