TAMPA, Fla. — With all eyes on Florida schools as the pandemic rages through the state, many students and staff are being told to stay home due to COVID-19 exposures.
As of Monday morning, 5,599 students and 316 employees in Hillsborough County Public Schools were in isolation or quarantine. Isolation refers to individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19 while quarantine refers to those who have had close contact with a positive case.
Hillsborough County Public Schools is the seventh-largest school district in the country. Students being told to stay home make up less than 3 percent of the entire student population.
For families impacted by quarantines, it can be a scramble, especially if a child is too young to stay home alone.
Just ask families with children in daycares.
Kristen Singer has a 2-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter in daycare in Oldsmar, Florida.
Singer says her daughter's entire class was told to stay home last week after multiple positive cases were reported at the center.
Now she and her husband are rethinking their childcare options for fear this could keep happening.
"It’s like what do you do? I have to work. I work form my living room. Having a 2-year-old is not necessarily doable," she said.
Preschool and daycare directors also have a dilemma in trying to find a balance in keeping their doors open for families, maintaining their bottom line, and keeping everyone as safe as possible.
For Marie Garland, the Director of Academics at Forest Hills Presbyterian Learning Center in Tampa, mitigation efforts are a priority.
Garland requires all children ages 3 and up to wear masks. There is no opting out.
"I honestly do think some of the safety measures with cleaning and things like that alongside our masks have really prevented us from every having too much of an inconvenience," she said.
Garland said they haven't had a positive case in the last six months.
If they do, the first step is contacting the county's childcare licensing department along with the health department.
Garland said the health department will offer some guidelines for who should quarantine but ultimately they make the final call for how long and who was exposed.
10 Tampa Bay obtained an e-mail sent to parents from a Pinellas County daycare. Referring contact tracing from the health department, the e-mail said in part, "I know they're slammed with cases all throughout Pinellas County. Many preschools/schools have it."
This delta variant is driving up cases in nearly every age group in Florida.
"We’re seeing unprecedented new cases and we’ve never had this many cases during the entire pandemic," said Kevin Watler, a spokesperson with the Department of Health of Hillsborough County.
Watler says the biggest spike is in people age 25-44 but young children can get the disease and spread the disease.
Children under 12 are not yet eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine.
"Just one child getting severely ill is too much, you never know who that child might be. Your child might be perfectly healthy but we do know there are some kids, perfectly healthy, they do have some serious side effects and we don’t want that to happen," said Watler.
10 Tampa Bay reached out to the Florida Department of Health to see if they are tracking COVID cases in daycares. We will update this story if they get back to us.
For families like Singer, juggling childcare and work is overwhelming but the health of her children is most concerning.
"My biggest fear is what if my children need to he hospitalized and there’s no place for them to go," she said.