Page 12 - Florida Sentinel 8-20-21

Feature
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
KAMILLE
This week’s Spotlight feature is Kamille. Kamille is looking forward to a great year, and promises to reach heights she had only dreamed about before. She wants everyone to know that she is a force to be reckoned with, and she won’t stop until she reaches her goal of total success. Congratulations to Kamille for appearing as this week’s Spotlight feature.
More Than 8,000 School Absences Linked To COVID-19
BY IRIS B. HOLTON Sentinel City Editor
On Tuesday, August 10th, the Hillsborough County School District opened for the new school year. Board members had decided before the school year began to require students wear masks. Any parents who didn’t want their children to wear masks could simply option out by writing a letter to the Hills- borough County School Board.
Currently, there are more than 8,000 students and 307 employees whose absences are linked to the COVID-19 virus.
According to Ms. Tanya Arja, Chief of Communications for the Hillsborough County School District, “As of 7 a.m., Tuesday, August 17, there are 8,707 individuals in Hillsbor- ough County Public Schools (8,400 students and 307 em- ployees) who are in isolation or in quarantine.”
Isolation refers to individu- als who have tested positive and verified by the Department of Health for COVID-19. Quaran- tine refers to those who have had close contact as defined by the CDC with a verified positive case.”
She further said, “All quar- antines are not necessarily asso- ciated with a school or district site. For attendance reasons, students who are quarantined due to exposure to an off-cam- pus COVID positive case are in- cluded in our overall quarantine numbers.
“This data should NOT be used to compute a positivity rate, as that information is col- lected and reported by the De- partment of Health based on all cases reported across Hillsbor-
ough County.
“Our district continues to
mitigate the spread of COVID-19 by aggressively applying CDC and DOH recommended strate- gies for schools. It is difficult to compare the start of this school year with that of the first weeks of school last year because there were 83,488 students that opted for eLearning and were not on campus. The state did not ap- prove funding for eLearning this year.”
She further said that what takes place in the schools is often mirrored of events taking place in the community.
“Since our community is see- ing a high positivity rate overall, we can expect our schools will be impacted in a similar way, al- though we are well aware that our positive cases trend is well below that of the community as a whole.
“We encourage those in our community to follow the same health and safety protocols out- lined by public health officials when they are out in the com- munity just as we do in schools.”
A mask mandate in the dis- trict would violate an order from Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) pro-
hibiting schools from requiring face coverings. After initially threatening to withhold school officials’ salaries if they resisted his anti-mask rule, DeSantis recently backed down, saying school officials pushing for masks should be responsible for the “consequences of their deci- sions.”
The Biden administration last week offered federal funds to school administrators in Florida if the governor made good on his threats. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona wrote in a letter to DeSantis and Richard Corcoran, the state’s education commissioner, that the U.S. Education Depart- ment “stands with these dedi- cated educators who are working to safely reopen schools and maintain safe in-person in- struction.”
If the board enacts a mask mandate, it will join a handful of other state school systems that have defied the governor’s order. Officials with Miami-Dade, Florida’s largest school system, said it would join other school districts Monday in requiring masks for students when classes start next week.
Parents and children arrive Aug. 10 at Egypt Lake Elementary School in Tampa for the first day of school.
'We Are On Fire': Five U.S. States Set New Records For COVID Cases As Hospitalizations Rise
Five states broke records for the average number of daily new COVID cases over the weekend as the delta variant strains hospital systems across the U.S. and forces many states to reinstate public health re- strictions.
Florida, Louisiana, Hawaii, Oregon and Mississippi all reached new peaks in their seven-day average of new cases per day as of Sunday, accord-
ing to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. On a per capita basis, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida are suffering from the three worst outbreaks in the country.
Louisiana recorded an av- erage of 126 cases per 100,000 residents as of Sunday, more than three times the national average, while Mississippi and Florida averaged 110 and 101
cases per 100,000 residents, respectively, according to the data.
"We're in the middle of the summer, people are gathering again with people, they're in large groups, the vaccine has given a false sense of security in some ways to people, and they forget," Dr. Perry Halkitis, dean of the Rutgers School of Public Health, told CNBC in an interview.
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