Published September 4, 2020

The Tennessee Department of Health is changing the way COVID-19 active cases are reported.

On September 3, the State announced it had performed an audit and found errors in their reporting of active cases. They are altering the way they report active cases. As a result of those corrections, the entire state, including Williamson County, saw a significant decrease in active cases. 

"Since we currently have all grade levels on campus, this State change has no immediate impact on us. We continue to focus on improving our instructional services to both students who are on campus and our students who are in the new online program,” said WCS Superintendent Jason Golden. “From this point forward, protecting against the spread of the virus and minimizing the impact of the Health Department’s quarantine process will be critical to our staying on campus."

Beginning the week of September 7, the State Department of Education will launch a new dashboard on its website that will display information reported by districts about COVID-19 in their communities. The district will link to that dashboard from the WCS website. WCS will continue to give weekly updates on the schools’ quarantine numbers in InFocus and update that information on the district’s COVID-19 Information webpage each Tuesday.

In addition, the district will remove the metric link that has been posted the past few months on the COVID 19 webpage. That metric was used earlier in the process of determining the effect of COVID-19 on the Williamson County community and school opening.

“The metric provided guidance to us during the early stages of determining if our schools could reopen,” said Safety and Security Director Michael Fletcher. “The metric served its purpose, but as school is operational now, we don’t believe we need it as a guide. We will continue to communicate regularly with our State and local health authorities throughout the year.”

For additional information about the Tennessee Department of Health's new format for reporting COVID-19 cases, you can view the Department of Health's website.