Illustration by Tess Buckley
Written by Sheryl Chen and Ellie Hultgren
*Edited 9/3/21 to reflect that COVID-19 cases are self-reported
The Sequoia Union High School District (SUHSD) recently released a COVID-19 dashboard of weekly student and teacher COVID-19 cases at every school in the district on their website. The site also includes the vaccination rates of all staff members in the district. This dashboard will be updated every Friday by the end of the day.
There were 13 total reported COVID-19 cases for the first three weeks of school at M-A, one of which was a staff member in a school of more than 2,400 students. Transmission declined as school continued—the first week of school saw a spike in cases but have since reduced.
M-A is the largest high school in SUHSD, and has reported the highest number of cases so far this year. COVID-19 cases at Carlmont High School totaled ten, Woodside High School reported eight, Sequoia High School reported six, Tide Academy reported four, and East Palo Alto Academy reported only three cases.
Moreover, the dashboard reported that approximately 96.02% of M-A staff members are vaccinated, compared to the 90.82% vaccination rate of the District.
This article is kind of deceptive because it doesn’t address how many tests were administered/what the positive test rate is. M-A and other schools in the district don’t have mandatory testing so for all we know only 13 people got tested and all of them were positive indicating a much higher infection rate than what the article implies. Sequoia needs to provide more information on this, but with their record (or lack their of) with transparency, I doubt this info will ever see the light of day.