Parents Knowingly Send Child With COVID-19 To School; 3 More Students Infected

The parents of a COVID-19-positive student in Marin County, California, knowingly sent their child to school for a week, causing a coronavirus outbreak in an elementary school, officials said.

A total of 75 students at the Neil Cummins Elementary School in the town of Corte Madera were forced to quarantine between Nov. 19 and 28 after the Larkspur-Corte Madera School District discovered that a family did not disclose that their child tested positive for COVID-19, the Marin Independent Journal first reported.

The Marin County Health and Human Services Department had notified the parents the week of Nov. 8 that one of their two children tested positive. But the family did not reveal the result to anyone and allowed both of their children to continue attending school the rest of that week and into the following week, according to the newspaper.

The family did not provide the name of the child's school when officials started the contact tracing process, a report by CNN said.

Multiple attempts were made asking the family to report the name of the school, but they did not return those calls, Dr. Brett Geithman, superintendent of Larkspur-Corte Madera School District in Marin County, told CNN. Officials, however, were able to figure out the name of the school.

Marin County health specialists later contacted administrators of the Larkspur-Corte Madera School District on Nov. 18 and inquired why Neil Cummins Elementary School had not yet uploaded the child's positive case to the school's database.

"We did not know this positive case existed. Upon calling the household, we learned that the student tested positive, did not inform the schools, and then sent the student and their sibling to school for seven days," Geithman shared in a written statement to CNN.

Geithman immediately notified all school parents of the incident in a letter on a private school communication service, which led to testing of two classes — or about 50 children — the morning of Nov. 19.

Geithman and his staff reportedly put in an estimated 150 hours for testing, data uploading and contact tracing.

A total of eight students tested positive, including the initial infected child, their sibling, three classmates of theirs who are suspected school-based transmissions and three students who are suspected household transmissions.

The two classes were advised to go into modified quarantine over the 10 days of the Thanksgiving break.

Students were not allowed to travel and attend family gatherings or group activities during the holiday break under the modified quarantine. They were also given home coronavirus tests to use over the break, which all came back negative, according to Geithman.

An additional 25 students from a third class were added to the modified quarantine after a positive case was found there.

All the children recovered from their infections, Geithman said. None of them were hospitalized or suffered significant symptoms, he added.

School officials vowed to take "corrective action" against the parents over the entire ordeal.

"If it is accurate that a parent or guardian did not follow required protocols and knowingly sent their COVID-positive child to school, there should be consequences because they have jeopardized the health and safety of other children, their families and school staff," Mary Jane Burke, Marin superintendent of schools, was quoted as saying.

Geithman said the parents have since "issued apology letters to me, the principal and the teachers involved." Additionally, he said the parents "recognized their lack of judgment."

It was unclear if the parents faced any legal consequences over the incident.