Public schools report 6,300 COVID-19 cases.
About 6,300 students and staff have been infected with COVID-19 since public schools began reopening in late July, according to new state data.
The cases represent just a small portion of the total students and staff who returned to their campuses at the start of this academic year. About 0.33 percent of the estimated 1.9 million students and staffwho have attended in-person activities contracted the virus so far.
The state also reported cases by district for the first time on Thursday, identifying the most positives at Garland ISD outside of Dallas.
There, 97 students and 38 staff have been infected. Brownsville ISD, in the Rio Grande Valley, has reported 116 infections, all among staff.
The state’s numbers appear to be incorrect for Northside ISD, the largest school district in the San Antonio metro area, a district spokesman said. The database showed nine students and 35 staffwere confirmed positives since the beginning of the school year, but the district’s own records list six students, not nine, as having been infected, said Barry Perez, executive director of communications.
In the week ending Sunday, 1,212 students tested positive for the virus statewide, as did 660 staff. The
student numberwas a slight uptick from the week prior, while the number of reported
staff infections fell.
A statewide total of 3,445 students and 2,850 school staff are known to have contracted the virus since July 27, when schools began reopening. All positives are of students or staffwho participated in on-campus activities. Just about a fifth of Texas’ roughly 5.5 million public school students have physically returned to the classroom so far.
The Department of State Health Services and the Texas Education Agency first released the statewide public school COVID data on Sept. 17 and will update the dashboard every Wednesday by 5 p.m. Private schools are not included in the tallies.
The state database listed Northside ISD’S enrollment as 113,750 in the first week since its school year began Aug. 24, but it was actually about 102,000, Perez said. The district now has about 11,300 students taking classes in person, Perez said.
“I’m not sure where they’re getting those numbers,” Perez said.
The 35 staff cases listed by the state only represent cases among on-campus staff members, Perez noted. The district has had an additional 29 cases among non-campus-based staff, but the TEA doesn’t require reporting those.
North East ISD started its school year on Aug. 17 with an enrollment of 61,000students, which is slightly more than listed on the state database, said Aubrey Chancellor, district spokeswoman. NEISD has had 25 positive cases, 11 of them
students and 14 staff, according to both the district and the state. About 16,000 students are back in classrooms for in-person learning, she said.
San Antonio ISD also began its school year on Aug. 17, with more than 43,000 enrolled students. It has had one student case and16 staff cases, according to the DSHS data and the school district.
Houston ISD has tallied 12 positive cases, with 10 among students and two among staff. Cypress-fairbanks ISD in the Houston area counted 17 infected students and 23 staffers.
A DSHS spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment seeking to clarify the data discrepancies. There are also slight differences in the total number of cases reported in the state’s district breakdown versus those reported on the dashboard.