As schools prepare for students to return to class, we now know the plans for reporting COVID-19 cases should they happen.



Abby Loring from KXXV Channel 25 reports that school districts throughout Central Texas will take guidance from TEA in reporting any cases of COVID-19 on school campuses.

Christine Parks, Temple ISD Chief of Communications and Community Relations, tells KXXV the district must "communicate the rights and responsibilities to students with COVID-19 and families", and that they must balance that with their requirement to notify families any time there is a positive COVID-19 case on a Temple campus. They'll reach out via text, email, and phone when positive cases are reported, and follow that up with additional information about any close contact the ill person had with other students or staff.

It looks like several different plans will be in place depending on which school district you live in. Killeen ISD will use a COVID tracker dashboard to track any cases by grade and campus. Taina Maya, Killeen ISD Chief of Communications, told KXXV there are plans to place a COVID tracker button on the district's homepage so that parents can easily access a dashboard with daily updates.

As of now, the state doesn't have a specific percentage of cases to declare or determine a closure, but both Killeen ISD and Temple ISD are looking at a 2% rule for school closure.

Lots of families are worried about face-to-face learning in the classroom. Killeen ISD and Temple ISD both list safety procedures on their websites for prevention and outlining protocols for positive COVID-19 cases.

Belton ISD is still hammering out details, but you can visit bisd.net/responseplan to see their COVID-19 Response Plan. It includes five scenarios ranging from total in-person learning to hybrid schedules and total campus closure.

Whatever happens, we would encourage parents to talk to their kids about taking the pandemic seriously and what they can do to keep themselves, their classmates, and school faculty safe. School can be challenging enough without a virus to worry about.

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