How exactly is the Park City School District computing the percentage of Covid cases?

My kids go to Jeremy Ranch. I think the principal there, Shawn Kuennen, has done a good job of communicating about covid. Earlier this week he sent out a preemptive email warning parents that a mask mandate is coming. That got me looking into the numbers.

In Tuesday’s Park City Scholl Board meeting, the district showed the enrollment for each school. So, I looked at Jeremy. We have 492 kids (as of October 1). The chart below shows enrollment for each school.

Then I went to the JRES home page to see our Covid Numbers, to see whether a mask mandate is needed. Here is what that shows:

Great, that number is down from Thursday where we sat at 12 cases if I recall.

But I started doing a little math. So, if there are 9 cases and that represents 1.44% of students, staff, and faculty, there would have to be 625 students, staff, and faculty at Jeremy Ranch. Mathletes, please check my work on that calculation.

So there are 492 students. That must mean there are 133 faculty and teachers at JRES. Let’s say there are four teachers for each grade from pre-school to fifth grade. That would be 28 teachers. Let’s say each of those classrooms had an aide (they don’t but we will pretend). That would double it to 56 people helping educate our children. There are of course music, PE, STEM, and art teachers helping. There are the folks working after-school programs. There are the administrative staff, maintenance folks, and those doing lunch. There are others that I have forgotten.

However, I find it hard to believe there are 133 people that are the faculty and staff at Jeremy Ranch. That’s the number to get to 625. Maybe there are. I don’t have the willpower to GRAMA request it. I’ll let the district first work out their issues at Parley’s Park. I don’t want to distract them from that. However, it just strains credibility.

Most importantly, I wouldn’t be asking these questions if I trusted the school district more. Again, like with the PPES issue, I am not making a mask argument (I have friends for masks and against masks, and I understand both sides). In this case, I am making a process argument.

If anyone has any insight into this, I’d love to learn more. Please, if I am wrong, tell me. That’s fair. I might just not understand how much faculty and staff it takes to run an elementary school.

Still, as Mark Twain said, “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.” We’re having a large debate over the handling of mask mandates at PPES but are we sure our baseline numbers are valid? If no teacher here can educate me on why I am wrong, I’ll go to the school district eventually once PPES is cooled down.

I just generally want to know how they get to these numbers.