Parent Calls For Oconee Schools To Release More COVID Case Data

Oconee GA

26 August, 2021

12:15 AM

Description

John Phillips, in a virtual meeting with Oconee County Democrats last week, said Oconee County Schools has not done enough to keep parents and the community informed about COVID-19 cases in its schools. To get a sense of what should be done, Phillips told the audience members, all they need do is look at Barrow County. "I just Googled Barrow County school COVID," he said, holding up his mobile phone to demonstrate. "And it pops up right here. And look at this. They have a chart here where they list cases by school, by date, broken out by student and staff." Oconee County School is only providing the number of active cases across the whole system at the end of the week, and it started doing that only after Phillips and other parents distributed detailed reports from documents they had obtained through open records requests. Phillips said of the report the Oconee County Schools is releasing: "At best, it's misleading. And at worst it's deceitful." Phillips, who has two children in Oconee County Schools, was speaking on Thursday evening. On Friday, neighboring Clarke County School District launched a new COVID-19 Case Reporting Dashboard that also is reporting detailed data on the disease in the system's schools. For more on the story, with a video of the meeting, please go to Oconee County Observations.