Changes made for COVID related school absentee reporting

Governor Kim Reynolds addressed questions about a recent change in policy for school absentee reporting during her regular press conference on Wednesday, Sept. 9.

Earlier this month during a Department of Education webinar for school administrators, schools were given new instruction on when to report students as absent due to illness.

Previously, students that were under quarantine because of potential exposure to COVID-19 were included in these absentee counts, however the state is now asking that schools only report absent students that are symptomatic or have tested positive for the disease.

Absentee reporting has traditionally been a binary process, as either the student is in school or they aren’t, regardless of the reason. However, with the availability of online learning as an option, students that are home because of quarantine but not necessarily ill themselves are no longer to be considered as “absent” for the purposes of public health reporting.

This change has raised concerns among educators that removing quarantined students from the absentee count raises the bar for when school districts will be allowed to request permission to go fully online. Current guidelines state that a district must have 10% absenteeism for two weeks before requesting permission.

Ann Lebo, the Director of the Iowa Department of Education, clarified that the change in reporting was made to ensure that the public health had a clearer idea of how many people in a district were actually ill, rather than just not present in the building. Only students that are out-of-school due to illness, whether it be COVID-19 or something else, should be reported to public health.

“We would have to create a whole new reporting system for schools in order to create a different specific scenario for this,” said Lebo.

Lebo also noted that the 10% absentee threshold is not a hard rule and other factors would also be considered when looking at applications to transition to online learning.

Reynolds also discussed the Des Moines Public School district, which has maintained an entirely remote learning policy for this school year and challenged the legality of her order for classes to resume in-person.

“I understand that they had a legal disagreement with our interpretation of the law, but two courts have now looked at the issue and have agreed that Iowa law requires school districts receive state approval to move primarily to remote learning,” said Reynolds.

Reynolds said she would continue to work with the Des Moines district to encourage them to create a state approved Return-to-Learn plan, stressing the importance of returning kids to the classroom.

“Part of the reason that the legislature and I are requiring that the primary means of instruction be in the classroom is because we know that the lack of in-person educational options disproportionately harms low-income and minority children, and those with disabilities,” said Reynolds. “For so many of our students, our schools provide everything from a safe and supporting learning environment, a hot meal, a caring mentor, and its critically important mental health services.”

As of Sunday, Sept. 13, there have been 74,500 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state, increasing the 70,035 total from the week prior by 4,465 cases, another decrease from the previous week.

In total, approximately 2,980 elderly adults (age 80+); 8,940 older adults (61-80); 20,115 middle aged adults (41-60); 36,505 young adults (18-40); and 5,215 children have tested positive for the disease. These estimates are based on a percentage-based breakdown of the state’s reported positive cases.

With 53,148 cases considered recovered, that leaves roughly 20,134 Iowans currently known to be fighting the disease, an increase of 1,005 from the previous week.

701,272 individuals have been tested since the start of the pandemic, including 684,953 PCR tests and 16,319 antigen tests. An average of 4,300 PCR tests per day were counted over the last week along with a total of 2,238 antigen tests. Current testing shows that roughly 60% of positive cases result in symptoms while 13% have been asymptomatic, with the remaining cases pending or unknown.

In addition, 53,195 Iowans have undergone serology testing for coronavirus antibodies, which would indicate that they have had the virus. Of that number, 3,199, about 6%, have tested positive for antibodies.

The number of hospitalized Iowans decreased last week to 274, with 79 patients in an ICU, a modest decrease from the week prior.

At the same time, 52 new deaths attributed to COVID-19 bring the total to death count of the disease to 1,218.

Of the deaths reported last week, 23 have been attributed to outbreaks in long term care facilities, bringing the total deaths in long term care facilities to 650. After decreasing the previous week, the number of facilities reporting outbreaks has again increased by six, with 35 now reporting outbreaks and 894 testing positive with 415 considered recovered.

In total, approximately 584 elderly (48%), 499 older adults (41%), 110 middle aged adults (9%), 24 young adults (2%), and one child (.1%) have died from the virus since the pandemic began.