The Cobb County School District’s attitude appears to be “if we stop counting COVID cases, COVID won’t exist.”
The Cobb County School District still has the following message on its website as of the publication of this “From the Editor” opinion column:
Every Friday when school is in session, Cobb Schools will provide you with the number of new active cases of COVID-19.
District cumulative totals will reflect district totals since July 1, 2021. School-by-school cumulative totals will reflect school totals since face-to-face instruction began August 2, 2021.
Yet the page has not been updated since December 15, 2021, before the holidays, and almost a month ago.
At that time, the district’s cumulative total of COVID cases stood at 6,709.
The Cobb County School District has instituted an unprofessional and, in my opinion, inept and childish policy of refusing to provide responses to the Courier through Nan Kiel, their spokesperson, so we must address with them through ORR (Open Records Requests), which they have to at least pretend they are complying with Georgian law.
But the district told the Marietta Daily Journal that the policy on whether to count and publicly report COVID cases among students is “under review.”
The case rate among 5- to 17-year-olds in Cobb County stands at 1,642 cases per 100,000 population during the Georgia Department of Public Health’s 14-day reporting period, several times higher than the threshold set by the CDC for “high community”. transmission.”
And Region N, the hospital region that includes Cobb County, is at 96.52% of its intensive care unit (ICU) bed capacity, which is not a sign of a pandemic under control. .
It is mind-boggling that with an ongoing pandemic, there would even be a question of whether the district would continue to report cases to the public.
We filed an open case with the district, and they have (on USB stick or CD-ROM! That’s a whole other story in itself) a response to our request to the district offices, which I will take on Monday.
But since I made the request last week, I have no idea if the numbers will still be relevant when I go to their offices, or if there will be numbers on the storage device.
I’ve often joked that the Cobb County School District is a taxpayer-funded public relations firm that runs schools as a side business.
But ending their reporting of case numbers when their reputation is already in tatters following their response to the COVID-19 pandemic doesn’t even show basic public relations competence.
Once the “review” is complete, I hope the Cobb County School District will come to their senses and start counting and reporting COVID cases. It’s really the only sensible course of action.