More North Texas districts cancel school due to staffing shortages, COVID-19

Some districts across North Texas are canceling classes as the omicron variant’s rapid spread provokes staff and substitute shortages.

Schools continue to be disrupted in Texas two years into the pandemic with hundreds of teachers quarantined across the state.

Grapevine Colleyville ISD is closing all campuses Thursday and Friday after it reported more than 230 new positive student and staff cases on Tuesday.

By Wednesday, the district needed nearly 170 substitutes but was only able to fill fewer than 50% of those positions.

Princeton, a district in Collin County, is closing campuses starting Friday through next Tuesday. Students are scheduled to return to classes next Wednesday. The missed days will be treated as if they were bad weather days, officials noted, so that children don’t have to attend class virtually.

Richardson ISD is also temporarily closing Bowie Elementary School on Thursday and Friday, Principal Chanda Ash wrote to families on Wednesday.

Health officials are finding that multiple cases in each grade are linked, meaning “transmission of the virus is actively occurring during the school day” within the campus, Ash wrote.

More than 10% of the school’s students and staff are currently reporting positive for COVID-19, and the campus’ absentee rate has reached 24%.

Last week, Mansfield and Northwest, two Tarrant County-area districts, closed all campuses Friday through Tuesday. Mesquite remained closed through Wednesday as officials there noted more than 15% of staff were absent.

The students returned to classes on Wednesday with no remote learning during the canceled days.

Northwest Superintendent Ryder Warren noted his district is reporting that its positive COVID cases have increased by 878% since Christmas, and nearly 480 of its staff are out with COVID-related absences.

NISD also has a “fill rate” of 50% or less to temporarily take over the seats of the educators who are out, Warren wrote.

“We have to break the cycle of positive tests,” he continued. “We cannot assure our schools are being successfully run day to day with so many campus-level staff out.”

Mansfield previously closed six elementary schools on Thursday. As of Jan. 20, MISD officials had 750 students and 195 staff with confirmed active COVID-19 cases reported.

“We intentionally chose a 5-day break to allow staff who are currently out sick to recover and to minimize the possibility of more community spread of the virus,” Mansfield Superintendent Kimberley Cantu wrote to families on Thursday. “MISD’s custodial staff will use this time to implement our COVID-19 deep cleaning protocol at all of our facilities.”

School officials urge students to be cautious over the holiday weekend.

Students will not have to make up the days because of built-in time in the district’s calendar

Meanwhile, many smaller, more rural districts are struggling to stay open during the pandemic. Boyd, a district about 30 miles northwest of Fort Worth, canceled classes starting Jan. 12, scheduling students to return to schools on Tuesday.

Kemp, which is about 45 miles southeast of Dallas, canceled classes on Jan. 13 and 14 because of the “rapid and significant rise in positive COVID cases” in the area, KISD Superintendent James Young wrote in a letter to families.

Red Oak, a school district in northern Ellis County, canceled Jan. 14 classes because of staff shortages, according to a Facebook post. Although it is being marked as a student holiday, officials are asking staff to work on-campus while refraining from coming into contact with others.

“We are feeling the impact of staff absences on every campus and in every operational function,” the post reads.

Officials at Argyle, a district about 30 miles north of Fort Worth, and Forney, a district east of Mesquite, also canceled classes on Jan. 14.

Rio Vista, a small district in Johnson County, canceled classes Monday and Tuesday after high positivity rates from COVID-19 testing that district held for staff members. Officials were forced to have a “student holiday” because of the lack of substitutes needed to cover those who would be out.

Although the urban areas are also struggling, districts in rural areas have even less people to fill in missing positions at schools, said Michael Lee, Texas Association of Rural Schools’ executive director.

“It’s just a great teacher shortage all across the state in all areas,” Lee said.

The association tries to identify and partner with companies that provide teachers virtually to help with the staffing shortages, especially for subjects that have less teachers available such as foreign languages.

“They’re just trying to deal with it,” Lee said. “It’s just so hard to fill these positions ... this is just a statewide problem.”

Lee worries about the impact the coronavirus pandemic is having on schools as it continues to place a heavy load on educators.

“Our teachers are going through so much stress,” Lee said. “There’s a lot of people who are leaving the profession and there’s not enough people coming into the profession to take their place.”

In most districts, students will not be required to make up the lost instructional hours. Scheduled extra-curricular activities will also continue as planned unless the students’ families are told otherwise.

Honoring Martin Luther King Jr. Day, schools were closed on Monday.

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