GATESVILLE, Texas — Gatesville Independent School District has reported 31 active cases of COVID-19 since the beginning of November. Fifteen of those were only just reported on Saturday. While the district has had cases pop up before, Superintendent Barrett Pollard said this was a bad turn.
"We started school back on August 13 and through Halloween, all of October, we only had 17 cases. Twelve students and five staff and all of them recovered," Pollard said. "Then November hits and we have this acceleration of numbers. Right now we are up to 31 active cases. Each kid that tests positive has a ripple effect with contact tracing on other kids that have to quarantine."
Of those cases, 17 have been at Gatesville's High School, which includes 11 students and six staff.
Pollard posted a video for parents on Facebook Wednesday that explains what the school district would do to get the situation under control. Gatesville ISD will shut down all campuses from Thursday to Sunday. On Monday, school will resume online only. The district hopes to bring students back to campus Tuesday.
In order to keep students safe, Gatesville ISD had to cancel its Veteran's Day program. It also had to cancel the playoff football game on Friday. That was especially tough to ask of students, as the team had won critical games in order to make the playoffs this year.
Pollard said multiple coaches and players had come into contact with people who tested positive for COVID-19 so they would have to quarantine those individuals. He also didn't want to put other districts at risk.
"We don't think it would be right or ethical to come to that game when we have a lot of our coaching staff and key players that have been exposed," Pollard said.
The school district made the move with the hope that more students can come back to class in the future. Pollard said many students simply were not doing as well when it comes to remote learning.
"These are fairly staggering failure rates. Thirty-five percent of all of our high school kids failed at least one subject. So if you were to randomly pick three kids at least one of them failed something. And of those who failed, more than two-thirds had been a virtual student at some point," Pollard said.
The district hopes to bring more students back to in-person instruction in the spring. Currently, the school district is still waiting to have additional COVID-19 tests come back for students that had contact with those that already tested positive, so the number could still grow in the future.
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