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Manatee County School District improves its COVID-19 Dashboard after calls for more transparency

"Since we were the first district to open, I think we were being kind of cautious in terms of what kind of information we were getting out."
Credit: The School District of Manatee County

MANATEE COUNTY, Fla. — Many parents within the Manatee County School District feel there’s not enough transparency when it comes to positive COVID cases in schools.

Gino Tutera is one of those frustrated parents. His kids go to Palmetto High School.  

"There's not a uniform effort from one school to the next,” Tutera said. “I mean everybody is just kind of winging it on the fly and there's so many discrepancies based on what the county says versus what the schools are doing."

Amid calls for more transparency, the Manatee County School District launched a COVID-19 Dashboard on their website

Now anyone can see how many positive COVID-19 cases are in their schools, dating back to the first day of classes.

"Since we were the first district to open, I think we were being kind of cautious in terms of what kind of information we were getting out, because our concern was violating privacy laws,” Mike Barber said.

Barber is a spokesman for the school district.

“We have to be very careful not to divulge any information that would break confidentiality under HIPPA or under FERPA,” Barber said.

He says there has not been clear guidance from the state as to what information they can release.

"That's why there's differences from every single district,” Barber said, “There's no uniform standard.”

Barber says they are trying to find the right balance between protecting individual's medical privacy, as well as providing information to the public.

Parents like Tutera, say they appreciate the new dashboard, but he believes schools needs to work on their communication.

This comes after his daughter was told to quarantine after potential exposure at school. Then a few days later, the family was told she was put on the quarantine list by accident.

“I think it's just a failure and a breakdown of communication from top to bottom that has kind of caused a snowball effect and I know a lot of parents are angry and we just got to get a grip on it,” Tutera said.

“We understand the concerns and again we just want to do what’s the best thing to do; again walking that balance between maintaining privacy but also keeping the public informed,” Barber said.

Following tonight’s school board meeting and a push to share more information, the Manatee County School COVID-19 Dashboard will be getting a makeover. The district plans to update it with more details.

School Board Member Dr. Scott Hopes tells 10 Tampa Bay it will look similar to Hillsborough County’s Dashboard. It will differentiate whether a positive case if a student or teach and show how many people are in quarantine.

Today, Sarasota County also jumped on the trend and created a data dashboard to track their positive COVID cases. You can find that information on their website.

RELATED: Here's where COVID-19 cases have been reported in Tampa Bay schools

RELATED: Manatee County Schools to launch COVID-19 dashboard

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