More North Texas school districts moving campuses to temporary remote-only learning due to COVID-19 cases
More North Texas school districts are choosing to temporarily move some campuses to online only.
Meanwhile, Texas Governor Greg Abbott is expressing confidence in the system already in place for managing the virus.
Texas has now surpassed one million cases. It's a significant marker.
RELATED: Texas becomes 1st state to surpass 1 million COVID-19 cases
But the bigger concern is the rate at which cases are spreading right now.
No doubt there's a lot of parents keeping an eye on the cases in their schools, more and more of which are temporarily moving to remote only.
In a school year that’s been anything but routine, there’s something unfortunately routine that we’ve been hearing lately from North Texas schools.
“We made the decision to temporarily move to remote learning only,” said Amanda Simpson, with Coppell ISD.
Coppell High School and its 9th grade campus are the latest to temporarily move to remote learning only.
The high school has 45 student cases and the 9th grade campus has 10, but many more have been impacted through contact tracing.
“What was of particular concern was the number on quarantine, which were getting to the hundreds for those campuses,” Simpson said. “In addition, we were having difficulty because of those who had to go on quarantine, especially our teachers, getting substitute teachers to teach those who weren't.”
RELATED: Children, young adults driving COVID-19 surge in North Texas, experts say
Coppell joins several other districts forced to suspend in-person classes at some campuses as case numbers rise again.
The other are: Eagle Mountain-Saginaw, Hurst-Euless-Bedford, Keller, Krum, and Sanger ISDs.
Our sister station, FOX 7 in Austin, asked Gov. Abbott about the North Texas school closures.
He pointed to existing measures in place, and the recent expansion of rapid testing for schools, but did not reveal any new measures.
“The Texas Education Agency has provided flexibility for these schools to be able to close back down and go back to remote learning if that is necessary, based on the level of outbreak, while also if possible maintaining classroom learning for the students that need it the most,” the governor said.
The governor also pointed to his executive order, which calls for an automatic reduction in openings and capacity if 15% of an area’s hospital beds are occupied by COVID-19 patients.
It’s nearing 12% in North Texas, and hospitalizations are at their highest since mid-August.
“Remember a couple things: First, it’s that we’ve been here before. We had the spike in July and people responded to it by using the safe practices such as distancing, etc., and that led to the opening of 100& of businesses in the state of Texas,” the governor explained.
For some perspective, three regions in the state are currently above that 15% threshold: Lubbock, Amarillo, and El Paso, which sits around 40% as of Wednesday.
Meanwhile, in Austin, it’s around 3.5%.