At least 45 small Texas school districts are forced to temporarily stop face-to-face classes due to increased cases of COVID-19 in the first few weeks during the new school year.
According to the Texas Education Agency, the shutdown is needed because at least 42,000 students were affected by the highly contagious Deta variant of COVID-19.
This happened despite hopes of starting the normal in-person classes during the start of the new school year.
Increasing cases of both staff and students have left schools scrambling, and many have said that they have limited tools to combat the virus and are left to resort to their strategies that differ from district to district.
“By far this is worse in terms of planning than last year,” said Tim Savoy, spokesperson for Hays Consolidated Independent School District, which closed some classrooms.
“There’s no question about it. Last year we had a lot of tools at our disposal: We could require masks, and we could provide a virtual option that was funded. … [Then], the delta variant kind of appeared and just exploded on us.”
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From Aug. 23-29, there were 27,353 new positive COVID-19 cases among students in Texas public schools, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services, making it the biggest one-week increase in the entire pandemic.
The state reports 51,904 cases among students and 13,026 among staff since the school year began. That’s about 1% of the 5.3 million students enrolled in the state as of January.
According to Frank Ward, spokesperson of the Texas Education Agency, they are tracking down closures informally, with information that they can gather only on media and district reports.
Additionally, state data about the number of coronavirus cases in districts that have closed at least once during the school year thus far is incomplete – 19 have not reported any cases in students or staff to the state, while case totals in 22 districts have been suppressed by the state due to privacy policies.
The list of public school closures in Texas is also incomplete, according to TEA.
Districts handle COVID-19 cases differently as smaller districts tend to close the entire school while larger districts close the classroom, grade levels, and individual classes.
