Northwest ISD closes all district schools until Wednesday after COVID-19 outbreak
Northwest Independent School District will close all of its campuses beginning Friday after over 1,100 positive COVID-19 cases have been reported among staff and students, officials said.
The school district said classes will be canceled until Wednesday, Jan. 19, while all high school extracurricular activities will continue as scheduled.
“You need to know that these days are not remote learning days and taking these off will not change our student instructional calendar at the moment. We are using these days as we would during inclement weather cancellations, which are built into our calendar,” Superintendent Ryder Warren wrote in a message to students, parents and staff. “[Extracurricular activities] can’t be rescheduled, and we have adequate staff to continue those activities. All activities involving our middle school and elementary students and staff are canceled beginning Friday.”
Warren said the school district has seen a nearly 900% increase of COVID-19 cases since Christmas break. As of Thursday, nearly 500 staff members were either infected with the virus and experiencing symptoms, or taking care of other family members who tested positive.
The district, like many others in North Texas, has struggled to find substitute teachers.
“For 17 of our campuses today, our Guest Educator ‘fill rate’ is 50% or less for our classroom teachers who are out,” Warren said. “To all of our stakeholders — I am sorry we are having to do this, but we have to break the cycle of positive tests. We are being informed by many medical experts from our area health departments that the Omicron Variant is providing less severe symptoms for many of us who have tested positive, but the issue is that positive tests still bring the requirement of quarantining, and we cannot assure our schools are being successfully run day to day with so many campus-level staff out.”
For Thursday’s in-person instruction, the school district “assigned a large majority of the central office staff to campuses,” the superintendent added.
While classes are canceled Friday and Tuesday, the district will work on deep-cleaning each campus and workspace. The school district plans to publish updated COVID protocols in the following week.
Monday was already planned as a district holiday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Classes are scheduled to resume Wednesday.
Northwest ISD serves more than 27,000 students in 14 cities, towns and communities across Tarrant, Denton and Wise counties, including part of Fort Worth, according to the district’s website.
“As we have said for almost two years now, we will get through this together — please make sure you are protecting yourself, your loved ones, and each other,” Warren wrote.
Several other school districts in North Texas have announced class cancellations this week as COVID cases spread across the region, including the Mansfield school district.
This story was originally published January 13, 2022 at 11:28 AM.
