COVID school report card numbers for the district were discussed.

Dunkirk Superintendent Michael Mansfield is concerned there is some confusion over the way that the COVID-19 report card from the schools is being interpreted.

At Dunkirk’s Board of Education meeting this week, Mansfield took the time to explain the way the reporting is done and how the district goes about doing it. “It’s important that the community understands that we don’t test. These are not our tests,” Mansfield said as he cued up the New York state web site. “This is reported to us through the county. Every day we get a daily report of any positive students or staff members in our district and then we enter our data for the day; the health department can also pump in data directly. What this means then is students and staff that are in our district, they have tested positive somewhere.”

Mansfield went on to explain that at the last meeting of the superintendents with the health department held Dec. 3, the health department reaffirmed that not one case of spread has happened in a county school district. According to Mansfield, all of these cases have come in from the outside.

“So when you see the school report card to me that’s a bit of a misnomer because the school isn’t doing that,” Mansfield stated. “They’re just the students and the staff that have tested positive.”

Later in the meeting Mansfield ran through the steps the district as well as individual buildings take if a positive case comes to light.

“Whenever there is a positive, the superintendent and the school nurse must be notified,” he said. “If it’s a staff member then human resources has to be notified.

“We get a positive response I notify (Dave) Damico (school board president), the administration, and the nurse assists with the contact tracing. We review the response with the health department, then we make a decision on what we’re going to do.

“At district level I notify the administrators, the district staff and the district families with a call. We’ll update the website and social media and local media, let them know if it’s going to be a district closure or a building closure kind of thing. If it’s a building level response then I notify the building administrator and they will notify staff and families.”

For anyone that wants a report on a school district visit https://schoolcovidreportcard.health.ny.gov/#/home go to ‘Public Schools’ begin typing in the school’s name and it’ll pop up, then click on the link to view the report.