Deputy Superintendent Walks Back “Privacy” Statement From Recent School Board Meeting
BOCA RATON, FL (BocaNewsNow.com) — Parents and members of the Palm Beach County “school community” WILL be notified when a student or staffer tests positive for COVID-19 in a school.
The policy statement, announced Tuesday morning during a Palm Beach County School District news conference, reverses Oswald’s comments from a school board meeting last week during which he said reporting positive tests would be a violation of a student’s privacy.
The Palm Beach County School District routinely notifies parents of “lice,” “hand foot and mouth” disease and other communicable illness issues without identifying a specific student. It was unclear why Oswald suggested that reporting COVID-19 infections on a school campus would be a privacy violation.
“We will be notifying the school community of any students who test positive for COVID-19,” he said Tuesday morning.
Oswald also stated that any student testing positive for COVID-19 — and students presumably in the same classroom — would all be moved to “distance learning” during an incubation and testing period that could last several weeks.
RELATED: Palm Beach County School District reworks school shooting drills for social distancing. Read it.
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