ECISD Superintendent Deliberates the Circumstances That Would Close Schools

With COVID cases going up and vaccines slowing down, this could be a recipe for disaster if things don't get better.

According to the Midland Reporter-Telegram, Scott Muri, Superintendent for ECISD, said the possibility of closing schools and going to online learning is coming up on the horizon if the numbers of new cases don't level out or begin coming down.

That scenario would be on an individual school basis though and not the district as a whole.

“We do not anticipate at this time a full-district closure,” said Muri during a press conference. “It would be more of an isolated incident, and our numbers at several of our schools are getting higher, really beyond a level of which we’re comfortable.”

ECISD says the numbers of positive cases is hovering around 60-80 cases per day in the whole district but there are other things that would cause a closure besides the rising cases.

“In some cases, it's the number of staff members that are absent from a school, which may indicate that we can't safely open,” said Muri. “We simply would not have enough adults to operate school safely, and that would be a district decision.”

The district is monitoring cases on a school by school basis along with asking advice from medical experts to keep tabs on whether a school needs to close or not.

The option of online learning is now there since the Texas Legislature approved a bill earlier this month expanding virtual learning till 2023, but it was not that way before this approval, all districts then were forced to go back to in-person learning with no other option.

The ECISD board of trustees voted for a resolution requiring all teachers and students to wear masks, but it will not happen until the Texas Supreme Court approves mask mandates in schools.

It will be a long school year if we cannot get this variant under control and now we have the new Mu variant that has popped up recently on the other side of the world.

As we say in radio "stay tuned."

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