New Dashboard Will Show COVID-19 in Tennessee Schools

Beginning Tuesday, parents with kids in Tennessee schools will be able to view how many cases of COVID-19 there are in classrooms. The  Tennessee Department of Education’s website will launch the dashboard today.

Initially, there was conflict over whether the state would share information regarding cases of COVID-19 in schools, citing federal privacy laws for preventing the release of such information publicly. Ultimately, the State decided parents need to know what’s happening “in order to make informed decisions” about their children’s well-being and education. Gov. Bill Lee states, “We think we’ve come up with a tool that will be important to understand cases and how this affects attendance, chronic absenteeism, academic outcomes of students.”

The dashboard will show statistics at both the district and school level, providing the number of new positive cases with a student and staff breakdown.

An important note: The positive number does not “necessarily mean that group contracted the virus at school. The dashboard will also show the primary operating model for schools within the district such as in-person, virtual or hybrid.”

If the number of active cases is less than five, you won’t see anything displayed on the dashboard. Also, the State is not posting data about schools with less than 50 students.

Users will have two ways to access information:  

• A map view— An interactive map of the state of Tennessee will enable users to hover over their county or region and select their school to reveal more information.  
• And a menu view—A drop-down menu will allow users to quickly select a particular district of interest to reveal more information.