Great Falls Public Schools will now report the total number of active coronavirus cases by school on the district's website on a daily basis.
The total number of active cases in the district will also be posted to the district's Facebook page. The updates will come every afternoon, sometime around 4:30 or 5 p.m., according to Superintendent Tom Moore.
The total number of active cases in the District as of Wednesday, October 7th, is 18.
The decision is a departure from an earlier protocol. The Cascade City-County Health Department announced in September that it would not release school-specific information about COVID-19 cases on a daily basis, citing privacy concerns. That announcement was made before CCHD was made aware that Governor Steve Bullock and the state health department planned to make school-specific data available on a weekly basis statewide. Soon afterward, the school district said it would refer families to the state for school-specific data.
The state claimed it would update its website every Wednesday. But last week, Moore claims the state fell behind in its reporting. In the interest of transparency, the district created its own team of internal and external members to provide school-specific updates every day, according to Moore.
"We're going to try hard to give our community an accurate picture of the number of active COVID cases by school, and then the district total, on a daily basis, to the best of our ability," he said.
