The Midsouth Association of Independent Schools makes a decent logical argument but not a strong legal one in its objections to their member schools in Mississippi being required to report weekly COVID-19 infection numbers to the state.
The school association, whose members locally include Pillow, Carroll and Delta Streets academies, say that private schools are not agents of the state and are essentially no different than any other business. Thus, MAIS raises the question as to why their schools — and not other businesses outside of the health care arena — are being singled out to report information that they only know if it is volunteered to them.
The objection is reasonable, if one thinks about all the other private establishments where people may be getting infected with COVID-19: stores, churches and factories, for example. None of these are being required to ascertain the COVID-19 status of their workers and their patrons and report that to a government agency.
Where the MAIS argument falls down, though, is in the law. Mississippi gives its state Board of Health and the top executive it hires wide latitude in trying to control communicable diseases. A statute says the Board of Health — and presumably its chief administrator — has the authority to set the rules for reporting, monitoring and preventing the spread of those diseases. The law makes no distinction between public and private entities.
The private school association might not like that Dr. Thomas Dobbs is expecting a high standard of accountability from its members, but he’s within his rights to do so. It also is sensible for Dobbs to ask for this data, since schools, public or private, can be prime sites for transmission of COVID-19 because of the close contact of students and the proclivity of children at spreading germs.
Dobbs has not taken a heavy hand so far. There has been no known effort to go after the schools that have not complied with his order, including Delta Streets and Carroll academies. He is trying to use persuasion, rather than prosecution, to get the holdouts on board.
MAIS should be encouraging its member schools to be good corporate citizens and assist in the effort to get a handle on this disease. Rather it seems to want to provide them with cover for ignoring Dobbs’ directive and the law behind it.
