Coronavirus is in Hampton Roads schools — but which ones? Districts won’t say.

When school employees in Hampton Roads test positive for the coronavirus, the public won’t know where they work. Districts are providing citywide totals at most, even as teachers — and in some cities students — get ready to return to school buildings for the first time since March.

Norfolk Public Schools would not disclose whether it had any cases, period, since the start of the school year. Every other district in the seven cities would provide only the number of cases reported districtwide, not by school.

Information about cases in schools has been limited and inconsistent from district to district since the pandemic started. For most of that time, schools were closed to most personnel and to students. But the lack of clear information continues even as students and staff return.

Some districts, such as Norfolk, previously disclosed schools with cases but have changed their positions on disclosure, citing employee and student medical privacy. Chesapeake, which reported three cases during the first week of school, said they’re considering a dashboard to share more information but that for now, they’re taking their cues from the local health department.

Since the summer, the Virginia Department of Health has declined requests to identify schools with outbreaks, choosing instead to provide only the total number of outbreaks in “educational facilities,” a broad designation that includes K-12 schools, daycares and colleges. The Department of Education doesn’t track cases.

This week, State Health Commissioner Norman Oliver said there’s no plan to change that.

“We will certainly keep track of those outbreaks,” Oliver said at a news conference Tuesday. “Depending on the nature of those outbreaks we may find the need to release information about specific outbreaks but at this point that’s about all I can say on that.”

A spokeswoman for the health department didn’t respond Friday to questions asking how the identification of schools with positive cases violates any individual’s privacy.

The secrecy over school-level case information mirrors the debate over disclosing the names of nursing homes with outbreaks, which the health department also initially declined to share. In June, Gov. Ralph Northam directed the department to release that information, saying the locations of outbreaks were “unlikely” to violate any individual’s privacy.

Legislation to require the disclosure of outbreaks at schools and other group facilities has passed both the House and Senate unanimously during the special session. Oliver spoke in favor of the bills, which aren’t law yet but could go into effect next month.

None of the existing laws protecting student privacy or health privacy support withholding information about cases districtwide, as Norfolk has done, said Megan Rhyne, the executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government.

“No one’s privacy is compromised by saying how many — out of a pool of thousands — cases there are,” Rhyne said.

Rhyne said she disagreed with the state’s earlier interpretation that they couldn’t disclose the names of nursing homes with cases but that if the state’s sharing that information now, there’s no reason they couldn’t for any other group setting.

With the unanimous support for the legislation, “the writing is on the wall,” Rhyne said.

“This is information that the legislature has said — and the administration has agreed — should be released... The bottom line is that thousands of students, parents and staff are being denied basic information that would allow them to make informed choices about educating our children and keeping workplaces safe.”

Sara Gregory, 757-469-7484, sara.gregory@pilotonline.com

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Total school coronavirus cases, Sept. 8-11*

Chesapeake: 3

Hampton: 0

Newport News: 2

Norfolk: refused to disclose

Portsmouth: 1

Suffolk: 3

Virginia Beach: 4

*These are cases connected to school buildings. Virginia Beach reported additional cases occurring among staff and students doing virtual learning.

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