MAST Academy Closes After Confirmed COVID-19 Cases

Valentina Arias, Multimedia Photo Editor

On Monday, Oct. 12, MAST Academy closed due to two students testing positive for COVID-19. Instead of being able to do in-person learning, they switched back to online learning after being in school for less than one week. They returned to school Tuesday after staff properly cleaned the school.

These students are not the first to test positive since the opening of schools in Miami-Dade County. Miami-Dade Schools has a dashboard that records the amount of students and employees who have the virus. Currently, eleven students and one employee tested positive for the virus in the county. Schools like Coral Park Elementary, Charles D. Wyche Elementary, Flagami Elementary and others, had positive cases confirmed in their schools.

On Monday’s news conference, Alberto Carvalho spoke about how the local health department verifies a case of the virus and it is then put on the dashboard. However, the district does inform the parents whose children go to these schools. G. Holmes Braddock Senior High School parents received an automated message notifying them there was a student with a confirmed case of the virus in their school. This case is not shown as one of the 12 cases on the Dashboard. 

MAST Academy students returned to school on Tuesday. Approximately 800 students are present since the day school has reopened in the county. Before the school had been shut down due to the cases, United Teachers of Dade posted a picture on social media showing everyone how closely MAST students were walking next to each other.