Texas district closes schools after COVID kills pair of teachers

Masks not required in classrooms, under governor’s order

A Central Texas school district is temporarily closing after two teachers died of coronavirus in the same week, as parents and lawmakers in the state continue to clash over mask mandates in the classroom.

Officials with the Connally Independent School District, north of Waco, said its five suburban schools are closed until after the Labor Day holiday after the COVID-19 death Saturday of Natalia Chansler, 41, a sixthgrade social studies teacher at Connally Junior High School. Her death came just days after 59-year-old David “Andy” McCormick, a seventh-grade social studies teacher at Connally Junior High School, died of COVID on Aug. 24, the district said.

“We are very heartbroken,” Jill Bottelberghe, assistant superintendent for human resources, told the Waco Tribune-Herald. “It is very devastating as far as the students, the staff, and the community as a whole.”

It is unclear whether either teacher was vaccinated.

The district does not mandate that students or teachers wear masks, following an executive order by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott prohibiting mandates on face coverings in schools that’s being challenged in court and defied by districts and counties statewide. Connally ISD has, however, recommended in its back-to-school guidelines that masks be worn in school.

Officials with the school district did not return requests for comment Wednesday. In a notice to parents this week, Connally ISD Superintendent Wesley Holt said the closure would “provide those who are positive with the virus or exposed to others with the virus, the time to isolate and recover.” While the number of COVID cases in the school district of fewer than 2,500 students was not specified, the district acknowledged to local media that there have been at least 51 confirmed infections at Connally Junior High School alone since classes started Aug. 18.

“This closure will also allow time for deep cleaning and sanitizing of all CISD facilities,” Holt said in an email to parents.

The news comes as the battle over mask mandates in schools has intensified in recent weeks in Texas, where the coronavirus has spiked because of the highly transmissible delta variant and millions who remain unvaccinated. The Texas Supreme Court denied Abbott’s request last month to block temporary restraining orders on his ban on mask mandates, allowing schools that are requiring face coverings in defiance of the state to proceed.

Mike Morath, commissioner of the Texas Education Agency, which suspended enforcement of Abbott’s ban in the state’s public school systems because of several ongoing court challenges, said Tuesday that the issue of whether districts can enforce mask mandates must be settled in court.

“This issue has a lot of folks fired up,” he told KXAS.

Surging infections and hospitalizations in Texas have left many parents worried about sending their children back into classrooms where others are not masked and could transmit the virus. The state is averaging more than 15,700 new COVID cases a day in the past week, according to data compiled by The Washington Post. The figure accounts for about 10 percent of the new cases nationally in the past week, and Texas is second only to Florida for most daily infections. Nearly 14,500 people are hospitalized in Texas for COVID, with 3,860 in intensive care units — the most in the nation.