Were Florida schools prepared for a pandemic?
"This is my new at-home classroom."
Before the COVID-19 outbreak forced students
to learn from home…
“All of the sudden, everything is gone.
It’s out the window. We have no idea what to do. And
the teachers have no idea.”
Did school districts have a pandemic plan?
And why won’t the state release the plan
it claims it had to the public?
“This is a recipe for disaster.”
Let’s see What’s Brewing.

I’m Jenna Bourne and I’m an investigative
reporter at 10 Tampa Bay.
If you’re new here, welcome to our caffeine-fueled,
homemade deep dive into issues that matter
to you.
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an episode.
We’ve been working on this story for more
than four months… ever since students suddenly
had to transition to e-learning.
Jenna: If you could sum up that transition
in one word, what would you say?
Delaney: “Messy.”
Strawberry Crest High School senior Delaney
Mobley says technology was one of the biggest
issues… specifically, access to digital
learning platforms like Edsby.
“When you log onto Edsby, the first like
week or two, everyone was on Edsby at the
same time. And so Edsby was crashing every
other day. That made turning in things difficult.”
Jenna: “Do you feel like schools were ready
for this?”
Delaney: “I don’t think so at all. I don’t
think they had any idea of what to do, like,
if we were going to be at home for a while.
And they weren’t prepared for it lasting
this long.”
In early April we sent a simple public records
request to the state and our 10 school districts
in Tampa Bay…
Send us any written pandemic plan you had
before the COVID-19 outbreak.
This is important because it can show the
public how prepared schools were or weren’t.
Whether they wound up following their plans.
Whether they had plans at all.
The responses were all over the place.
Some refused to send us their plans, some
had no plans, some had plans but they hadn’t
been updated in more than a decade.
Before we take a deeper dive into the local
level, let’s tackle the state plan.
We first told you in May the Florida Department
of Education refuses to release the plan they
claim they had before this pandemic.
They say it falls under their Continuity Of
Operations Plan known as a COOP for short.
Basically it’s a plan Florida agencies are
required to have to continue operations during
any emergency, which supposedly includes pandemics.
But the state won’t send it to us because
they say it falls under a “security and
fire safety” exemption in Florida’s public
records law.
We asked a public records expert to weigh
in.
“The statute that talks about the fire and
security plan is very specific. It says it
includes records relating directly to the
physical security or fire safety of the facility
or revealing security or fire safety systems.
That’s not what you’re asking for.”
Of course, we don’t want to reveal any information
that would put kids’, teachers’, or anyone’s
safety at risk.
That’s why we’ve asked the Department
of Education multiple times to redact any
part of the plan that reveals “security
and fire safety” info and send us the rest.
They still won’t do it.
Like, is the Department of Education afraid
that the virus will find out its plans?
National Education Association President Lily
Eskelsen García tells us she’s skeptical
the plan exists.
“What upsets me is when someone pretends
they had a plan. When they say, oh no, no,
we know exactly -- We have a plan, we just
can’t show it to you? I think we need to
be really honest with each other now.”
Which brings us back to our question:
Were Florida schools prepared for a pandemic?
That’s hard to answer when the plan is kept
secret.
What good is a plan if no one knows what’s
in it?
Because here’s the thing: major decision-makers
in our state when it comes to education haven’t
seen the plan either.
The Chair of the State Senate Committee on
Education hasn’t seen it.
Jenna: You’ve mentioned several times that
you’ve seen an overview of the state plan,
but you haven’t actually seen the state
plan itself.
Diaz: “Well, I don’t have the document
in my hand. What I have is gone over summaries
and major points.”
The president of the Florida Education Association
hasn’t seen it.
Jenna: How do you feel about the fact that
you haven’t seen any written plans?
Ingram: “Well, it’s tough. And that’s
unfortunate for those in leadership: our governor,
our commissioner of education. I think those
folks have to answer for that.”
Ok, good idea.
The Department of Education didn’t respond
to my multiple requests to interview to the
Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, so
I tried to snag him before one of the governor’s
news events in Tampa.
Corcoran “If you want to get me right after,
it would be better.
Jenna: Right after?
Corcoran: “Yeah, yeah.”
Jenna: Are you still going to be around?
Corcoran: “Yeah, I’ll be around.”
I tried to ask the governor about it, too.
Jenna: “Governor, the Florida Department
of Education is refusing to release its pandemic
plan. We’ve been asking for three months.
Don’t you think the public has a right to
know what’s in the plan?”
DeSantis: “Richard, you want to take that?”
Jenna: “Governor, I’d like to hear what
you have to say about that as well.”
Corcoran: “You’ve reached out to us several
times. My office has communicated with you
very clearly that the pandemic plan – in
it, is what we strategize on how to keep our
school children safe. And it is not a public
record. And if you’d like, we’ll get you
the statute, we’ll get you the general counsel”
Jenna: You’ve been citing a fire safety
plan, sir.  A security and fire safety plan.
Corcoran: "No, no, no it's about school safety. And, it's about protecting children."
After the news conference wrapped, Corcoran
walked out a side door.
Jenna: He’s walking out. Mr. Corcoran, you
said you’d answer a couple questions for
me.
Corcoran: “You already asked them [indistinguishable].”
Jenna: Mr. Corcoran, don’t you think that
the public has a right to know about their
plans for schools? Mr. Corcoran, you’re
not going to answer our questions?
Corcoran: “I answer all your questions.
Every single time, I answer your questions.”
Jenna: Then why are you driving away, sir?
The next day I talked to Senator Manny Diaz
who you heard from earlier. Remember, he’s
the chair of the State Senate Committee on
Education.
Diaz: “I think putting too much into what
the state overall plan misses the mark because
you’re going to have 67 different plans,
to be honest with you.”
He’s not exaggerating.
We found that, prior to the COVID-19 outbreak,
school districts had a patchwork of pandemic
plans.
The School District of Manatee County tells
us their plan was created in 2006 and remained
untouched until April of this year.
They wouldn’t send us their plan either,
citing the same exemption as the Florida Department
of Education.
Pinellas County Schools sent us this plan from about 10 years ago when H1N1 was an issue.
It mentions closing schools in the case of a widespread outbreak, but doesn't say anything about virtual learning during that time.
Hardee and Highlands Counties tell us they
didn’t have formal pandemic plans before
COVID-19.
And this patchwork of plans led to different
outcomes for students depending on their zip
codes.
Diaz: “Florida is so different for different
reasons. There were places in the more rural
places where we had issues with connectivity
and really they had to kind of pivot to distance
learning packets and things of that nature.
We had other districts that did an incredible
job.”
Jenna: Do you think that having these plans
in advance, before a pandemic like COVID-19
hit, could have prevented this chaos?
Garcia: “We’ve never dealt with anything
like COVID-19 and shutting down an entire
country, really the entire the world shutting
down. So, I don’t want to throw rocks at
people and say, ‘Well, you should have imagined
that this happened in some parallel universe.’
But let’s just take what we could have done
this time.”
So, where do schools go from here?
All summer, each school district has been
scrambling to figure out what the plan is
going to be for this new school year.
Jenna: Do you think that there needs to be more uniformity?
"I think that there's some structure and 
 skeleton that needs to exist so that individual
districts can make these decisions and cater
them specifically to their community.”
In the meantime, Delaney says she’s been
stressing out about her senior year all summer.
Delaney: “It’s been super nerve-wracking.
It’s such an unprecedented time and no one
really knows what’s going on.”
We’ll keep you posted as we continue to
push for the Department of Education’s pandemic
plan to be made public for you.
You can also find a full breakdown of how
our 10 local school districts responded when
we asked for their pre-COVID-19 pandemic plans
right now on 10 Tampa Bay.com
Subscribe to this channel so you don’t miss
an episode of What’s Brewing, and I’ll
see you next time.
