NISD parents are asked to keep their kids home
Citing the current surge in COVID-19 cases, Northside Independent School District Superintendent Brian Woods urged parents Wednesday to keep their elementary and middle school kids home and in virtual learning for the next two weeks.
“Hopefully this will get us past the surge in cases we are now seeing in our city,” Woods said in a video posted on the Northside ISD website and social media accounts.
“To be clear, this is a request. It is not mandatory and we are not closing Northside schools,” he added.
Northside ISD, the largest in Bexar County, serves about 107,000 students, though only about 45 percent of them were in classrooms at its 121 schools as the fall semester ended.
Woods had been encouraging a return to classrooms to combat the learning slide that kids have experienced since March, when the arrival of the pandemic closed all campuses for the rest of last year’s spring semester.
Calls have been mount
ing from Northside American Federation of Teachers, the district’s union, to scale back in-person offerings since virus cases started an upswing even before winter break began.
Classes resumed Jan. 4 for middle and elementary school and this week for high school. High school students are excluded from Wednesday’s request because they already use an alternating-day hybrid schedule that allows for smaller populations on any given day, Woods said.
As of Jan. 10, the district reported 582 campus staffers, noncampus staffers and students had tested positive for the virus since the semester began.
That exceeded the total for the three prior weeks, which included the winter break, of 425 cases, the district reported.
That number itself was almost half the total of cases, 899, reported previously during the entire fall semester, the Texas Department
of State Health Services database shows.
Countywide, the virus outbreaks attributed to schools have been low, but the Northside teachers union cited the recent numbers in a message to district officials.
“Stop telling us kids are safe! Numbers don’t lie,” the union
wrote on Twitter.
Texas Education Agency rules prevent school districts from denying in-person learning to anyone who chooses it. School districts risk losing funding if they switch to fully remote learning again, as they did in the spring.
“Cases have continued to rise in San Antonio these last few
weeks since the holidays, and we want to do our part to avoid broader closures of schools or other important institutions,” Woods said. “The state requires us to offer in-person instruction daily, and in fact, our funding is tied to this requirement, but we still want to do what we can to help keep the public health metrics in check.”
Some districts have curtailed in-person learning, seeking parents’ cooperation to keep it limited to students who need it most. San Antonio ISD Superintendent Pedro Martinez has kept his oncampus population at about 30 percent by facilitating close communication between principals and teachers with parents.
In Edgewood ISD, district leaders have asked the parents of remote learners in elementary and middle school to consider keeping them studying at home until community spread wanes in San Antonio, Superintendent Eduardo Hernandez said.
“The parent always has the last say, but we’re going to really ask them to take that into consideration
and I think some will take us up on it and others will continue to send them (back to classrooms), but it will be a smaller number,” he said.
The district had planned to bring high schoolers failing three or more classes back to campus with the start of the semester in an effort to provide them with additional support, but those plans have been pushed back “a few weeks,” Hernandez said.
Woods asked parents who are able to keep their kids home to start doing so beginning next Tuesday through the end of the month.
“Obviously, this is not feasible for all of our families. However, if your child can be successful in the virtual environment, I ask that you consider making this temporary change,” Woods said. “If you do choose to go to virtual learning for these two weeks, you will in no way give up an in-person slot for the rest of the school year.”