The Glendale Unified School District unveiled a new dashboard this week to illustrate the level of coronavirus infection among students and staff members involved in the district’s learning pods and athletic conditioning programs.
The dashboard, which is slated for regular updates and can be found online, will include current and cumulative confirmed cases as well as positivity and transmission rates at GUSD school sites. Names and other personal information will not be included, to protect privacy.
“As we continue the careful and deliberate return of our highest-need students for on-campus child care and instruction, we are counting on our students, families, and employees to help us by taking responsible measures to protect our entire Glendale Unified community.” said Superintendent Vivian Ekchian in a prepared statement.
For now, the cumulative and current cases are effectively the same in most situations, given the limited number of students and staff in given areas since the start of the school year.
At elementary schools, the GUSD has started the year by employing learning pods, in which students who are the children of essential workers, teachers and low-income families are assigned to groups of around 10, use the same desks in the same rooms and are watched while they do their distance learning.
More recently, student athletes in higher grades have begun to resume outdoor physical conditioning; they, too, are divided into groups using distancing guidelines.
A total of 20 GUSD students has tested positive for COVID-19 — with 13 of those tests coming in the past 14 days — as of Friday. Marshall and Mountain Avenue elementary schools have each had three positive cases, while Columbus, Edison, Franklin and Verdugo Woodlands elementary schools have each had two and Dunsmore, Jefferson, La Crescenta and R.D. White elementary schools have had one apiece.
Crescenta Valley High School and Hoover High School have each had an on-site student test positive.
A notes section in the dashboard does include some context for cases when relevant. For example, several of the recent cases involve students from the same family unit. Numbers also indicate the number of people who have been quarantined as a precaution since the beginning of the school year.
Nine on-site staffers have tested positive for the virus: two each at Edison, Franklin and Verdugo Woodlands and one apiece at Columbus and Glenoaks Elementary School and Hoover High.
Contact tracing indicates that there has been no on-site transmission at any of the schools, GUSD said.
The district’s elementary schools have anywhere between 16 and 77 students on campus at the moment, with 29 to 68 staff members at those locations as well.
“Student and employee safety is and always will be our top priority,” said Dr. Armina Gharpetian, president of the GUSD Board of Education. “We are committed to providing accurate and transparent information regarding COVID-19 cases, while also maintaining the privacy and confidentiality of our students and staff.”
To view the dashboard, visit gusd.net/COVID19Dashboard.
