MERIDIAN, Idaho — With students back in school, a lot of parents have been asking KTVB to clarify how the West Ada School District, Idaho’s largest school district with more than 40,000 students, is tracking the COVID-19 cases happening in schools.
A spokesperson for the district told KTVB on Wednesday that the nurses enter the positive cases into the COVID-19 cases dashboard on its website. The positive cases reflect students and staff who were infectious only while attending in-person school, according to the school district.
Students in the quarantine column reflect those students in quarantine who were in close contact with an infectious individual at school.
The data collection began on the first day of school, which was last Thursday, August 26.
As of Thursday morning, the dashboard showed there were nine total staff cases and 53 student cases, up from seven staff and 40 student cases Wednesday afternoon. This comes to a total of 62 positive cases across the district since school began.
Keep in mind, that's based on the dates August 19 to September 1. The data is tracked in two-week periods.
Last week, the school district told KTVB, it updates the information in real-time. On Wednesday, a district spokesperson told KTVB that they now update the data at 5 a.m., 10 a.m., 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. each day of the week.
Currently, the West Ada School District has a face mask requirement for students and staff, which they can opt out of and many parents already have. Nearly 13,000 students' parents have filed paperwork to opt their children out of the face mask requirement.