CORONAVIRUS
Texas plans to collect, publish data on school-based COVID cases.
State government officials plan to track and publicly report confirmed cases of COVID-19 tied to public schools, the Texas Education Agency and Department of State Health Services announced Thursday.
In a joint statement, the two agencies said they are developing a reporting system for school districts that will allow the Department of State Health Services to publish information on cases and outbreaks beginning sometime in September.
“Data on the number of cases in schools is of paramount interest to parents, students, teachers, staff, public health experts, policymakers and the larger community,” the agencies said in their statement. “This information will be submitted to DSHS any time there is a positive case in a campus community.”
State officials did not specify what data they will publish, including whether they will name specific schools with confirmed on-campus cases. In Michigan, state health leaders drew some criticism this week after posting the number of confirmed schoolbased cases on a regional basis, but not identifying campuses.
“TEA is collaborating with superintendents on the reporting process and will finalize it in the coming days,” the statement read.
The announcement comes as a small percentage of Texas public school districts begin resuming some in-person classes to start the 2020-21 academic year. Among Houston’s larger school districts, only Humble ISD has formally started face-to-face classes, welcoming back some students with disabilities Monday.
Humble and Lamar CISD plan to bring back all students who chose in-person classes starting next week, while several districts expect to phase in face-to-face instruction starting Aug. 31. Cy-Fair ISD, Katy ISD and several other districts plan to begin in-person classes during the week after Labor Day.
Houston ISD will not reopen campuses until mid-October at the earliest, and Alief and Fort Bend ISDs have announced they will remain online-only indefinitely.
Calls for increased tracking of school-based cases of potential COVID-19 exposure have increased as districts across the country that resumed face-to-face instruction started reporting potential outbreaks. In dozens of districts, a smattering of schools have briefly closed or a small percentage of children are in quarantine after a student or staff member tested positive for COVID-19.
Some Houston-area parents were notified in August that an individual with a confirmed COVID-19 case was present at two school-affiliated locations: CyFair ISD’s Andre’ Learning Center and Spring Branch ISD’s The Zebra Zone School.