ODESSA, Texas — With children beginning to return to in-person classes full time, ECISD is watching the COVID-19 numbers daily.
"First of all, we’re concerned about COVID-19 in general and the rise in our community, and I applaud what our students and our faculty members, staff members are doing to keep our kids safe and we will continue to use those measures to ensure that everyone that is on our campus remains safe," said Scott Muri, ECISD's superintendent.
On November 16, more students will have the opportunity to go back to in-person classes, but about one-third of all students will remain virtual. Muri hopes this will keep the case counts in schools low.
"Right now, we are very comfortable with the number of children that we have in our schools. We also monitor our own data on a daily basis to make sure that ECISD is not doing anything to contribute to the rise in COVID-19 cases in our community," Muri said.
Even though the plan is to move forward, Muri isn't afraid to move in reverse to protect the district.
"If at any point we feel like the practices that we have in place or simply having the number of students that we have in place in our system, if that is contributing to the increasing numbers in our community, then we will absolutely go backwards and transition more of our students from face-to-face back to a virtual environment," Muri said.
As for finding positive cases at schools? The district is working with the health department and going through rigid protocols and contact tracing to identify any exposures.
"If we have a student that tests positive, any other individuals, any other children or any adults that were exposed to that child through contact tracing, we find out the names of those individuals and we alert individually those folks and they are quarantined," Muri said.
You can find out how many cases of COVID-19 your particular school has seen spanning from August 5 to the present day by visiting ECISD's website.