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The EPISD school board passed a temporary provision Tuesday night that will require face coverings on campuses through Feb. 15, but will allow parents to opt out conditionally.
El Paso is seeing a surge of COVID cases and coherent protocols from school districts are needed, El Paso infectious disease expert Ogechika Alozie told El Paso Independent School District trustees at a school board meeting Tuesday as the board considered options for tackling the surge.
Alozie has taken care of more than 1,000 patients living with COVID and hundreds who have died from the virus. He also has two children attending EPISD schools.
“Not only is our positivity rate, but our cases per 100,000 is consistently going up over the last four weeks,” he said. “In fact, we’re now having some of the highest case numbers that we’ve had since 2020 in the pandemic in El Paso.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends people with COVID quarantine for a minimum of five days and wear a mask while indoors for 10 days total from the first day of exposure.
Texas school districts cannot mandate students wear masks, so El Paso, Socorro and Ysleta ISDs require students to quarantine for 10 days.
The EPISD measure, which goes into effect Jan. 25, comes with a provision allowing parents to opt out if their child is not COVID-19 positive.
Students or staff who test positive for the virus and return to campuses after five days in isolation with no symptoms will need to wear masks.
The measure exempts students taking part in athletics and fine arts activities from having to wear masks during games, events, practices and performances, unless they test positive within the previous 10 days.
The motion passed 4-3 with trustees Daniel Call, Al Velarde and Isabel Hernandez voting against it.
Socorro ISD has not confirmed any mask requirements, but a spokesperson said they are encouraged.
“To continue efforts to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and Keep SISD Safe, the Socorro Independent School District highly recommends the continued use of masks in indoor settings. Masks remain required on school buses.”
Public Health officials warned of a COVID spike after the holiday season, and the presence of the Omicron variant was first confirmed in El Paso on Jan. 3.
EPISD sees surge in COVID cases after winter break
When classes resumed for the spring semester Jan. 4 at EPISD schools, 17% of the district’s 50,000 plus students were reported absent and 1,247 of those were in quarantine because of COVID.
Two days after EPISD classes resumed, El Paso Public Health reported 23.96% of new cases were among residents younger than 18 years old.
COVID stats for EPISD
- 1,779 students were in quarantine with COVID at the end of the first week of school.
- 1,273 students in quarantine as of Jan. 11.
- Student active cases rose to 1,644 as of Wednesday.
- There were 806 employees absent on the first day of school and 338 of those were teachers; there are 8,300 employees in the district. There were 25 staff cases reported on Jan. 9. By Wednesday, there were 364 active cases among staff.
Not all absences reported on the first day of school were related to the virus, as some people experienced travel delays catching flights returning to El Paso after winter break, district spokesperson Gustavo Reveles Acosta said.
El Paso Teachers Association President Norma De La Rosa said some teachers did not immediately resume teaching when school started because they had already tested positive for COVID, were in quarantine, or someone in their family was in quarantine.
“This was to be expected considering that families got together over the holidays and people were going to either get sick or exposed to COVID,” De La Rosa said.
To continue combatting the virus during the surge, the district will offer COVID vaccination clinics in February, Carla Gonzales, associate superintendent of academics & school leadership at EPISD, told trustees at Tuesday’s board meeting.
The district hosted vaccination clinics at elementary and middle schools in January.
EPISD COVID mitigation efforts
- On-campus COVID rapid testing is available for students and staff considered a “high risk exposure”
- All EPISD campuses are stocked with Personal Protective Equipment.
- Social distancing is highly encouraged at EPISD schools, particularly in classrooms.
- Deep cleaning is happening everyday, particularly in areas where increasing COVID case numbers are reported. This could mean moving events or closing buildings for deep cleanings.
- All EPISD campuses are contact tracing for COVID.
- Letters to parents are no longer being sent campus-wide when there’s a possible COVID exposure in a classroom. For students who have been within six feet of a person with COVID for at least 15 minutes, all parents of students in that classroom will still be notified via letter.
- COVID positive students and employees must quarantine for 10 days, though high-risk exposures can opt out of quarantine. Students who become symptomatic or test positive for COVID start the 10-day quarantine from that day.
COVID positive students and staff must quarantine.
But asymptomatic COVID positive students and “high risk exposure” students — those who are at a higher risk of exposure to the virus — can opt out of the quarantine requirement.
More:Remote conferencing, virtual learning: Is learning online returning to El Paso schools?
Takeaways from El Paso infectious disease expert on El Paso COVID surge
Alozie said the Omicron variant—the prevailing variant in El Paso and the U.S. — is less severe, except to vulnerable and at risk populations. Children under 5 years old and the unvaccinated are also have a higher risk of getting the variant.
N95, KN95 or KF94 masks are most effective masks to use against the virus, Alozie said.
Vaccination against COVID remains the most effective protection against the virus, he said.
Alozie said he anticipates that after this wave, immunity in the community will increase and the virus will become endemic in El Paso by summer, with possible spikes during winters.
El Paso school district COVID-19 case online dashboards:
El Paso ISD: https://bit.ly/3rS4HPB
Socorro ISD: https://www.sisd.net/Page/69682
Ysleta ISD: https://www.yisd.net/Page/15851
More:City of El Paso begins administrating COVID-19 boosters to children 12 to 15
More:El Paso COVID-19 hospitalization rate reaches 26%, omicron variant majority of new infections
More:City of El Paso health officials update COVID-19 isolation and quarantine guidelines
Cristina Carreon may be reached at ccarreon@elpasotimes.com and @Cris_carreon90 on Twitter.
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