Fort Worth high school staff in quarantine after possible exposure to COVID-19
Several staff members at South Hills High School are in quarantine after being exposed to COVID-19, a Fort Worth school district official said.
Clint Bond, Fort Worth ISD spokesperson, said contact tracing efforts from Tarrant County identified that some staff members could have been exposed to the virus. Bond said he could not reveal how many staff members are quarantined or if any of them have COVID-19.
Staff members have to be quarantined for 14 days and the district will conduct a thorough cleaning of the high school, Bond said. He could not provide when staff members initially went into quarantine.
No other schools in the district have had staff quarantined or had outbreaks, he said.
A Facebook post made Saturday claimed that the principal and secretary have not been wearing masks on campus. Bond said that according to the district’s back to school plan, employees must wear a mask while on campus. He did not say if the claims about the principal and secretary are true.
Bond said first-year teachers and some administrative staff have been back on Fort Worth campuses since the first week of September and teaching from there so they can get acclimated to the district.
The school has not been closed to those who aren’t in quarantine and are expected to be back at work on Monday.
Fort Worth schools are expected to start in-person learning on Oct. 5, unless the Fort Worth board of education decides to extend online learning until Oct. 30 during their next meeting on Tuesday.
If online learning is extended, the board wants to gradually increase and stagger in-person learning on campuses. The transition to optional in-person classes would then be completed Nov. 2.
Deciding when and how to bring students back on campus has been a hot topic since coronavirus hit Texas in March and caused the shutdown of schools.
To help with decision making, Tarrant County released a dashboard that indicated what schools should go back to in-person based on county COVID-19 data. So far, the county recommends that most school districts in the county consider hybrid learning, which is a mix of in-person and online classes.
The county as of Saturday reported a total of 46,537 cases and 633 deaths, according to county data. There have been an estimated 40,840 recoveries.
Across Texas, state officials report that over 2,000 students and 2,000 staff members have tested positive for the coronavirus since the start of the school year. Those numbers represent less than 1 percent of the students and staff who have been on school campuses statewide.
This story was originally published September 19, 2020 at 8:36 PM.
