When classes moved online during the early stages of the pandemic, child-abuse reports plummeted around the nation. Advocates worried that without teachers and school staffers paying attention to kids and watching for signs of abuse, many cases would go unnoticed.

But now that most students in Miami are back in school, reports of child abuse are on the rise. New data from Kristi House, a child-advocacy center in Miami-Dade County that coordinates services for child victims of abuse and sex trafficking, shows that while the number of reported abuse cases dropped around March, reports of abuse have been rising since September.

“We know about 40 percent of all abuse cases are reported by school personnel. You can imagine in March when schools closed down, we saw a decline in case reporting,” says Amanda Altman, CEO of Kristi House.