Limited Info Will Be Released About School Related COVID-19 Cases

Kids across El Paso County will be heading back to school a little at a time. You can check out individual school district websites for their return to the classroom timelines, but on most district websites you won't be finding information about COVID-19 outbreaks at individual schools, and you certainly won't be getting that info from the City of El Paso, either.

There have already been a number of COVID-19 positive cases reported in El Paso school districts but even though the El Paso County Health Authority releases the overall number of new coronavirus infections daily, only the El Paso Independent School District will be releasing information on coronavirus outbreaks at individual campuses. The Socorro, Ysleta, Canutillo and Clint school districts currently only notify parents when a case is confirmed at a specific campus.

School districts are required by the TEA to file weekly COVID-19 case reports. They are also required to notify families when someone who has been on a campus tests positive for COVID-19, and quarantine if they had close contact with the infected person. But a Texas teacher's union says that school districts need to be more transparent about outbreaks at individual campuses so that their safety protocols can be examined and possibly trigger a shut down of the school temporarily. An outbreak is defined as more than 2 positive COVID-19 cases.

You will be able to get daily updates about the number of cases at EPISD campuses on a digital dashboard that is scheduled to go active by the time students start going back to campuses on October 1. Ysleta, Clint and Canutillo district officials don't have any plans to publish campus-level case data on their websites.

As for the City, they have voted twice to not release outbreak information for businesses and that includes schools so you won't get that info from them. If you look on the City's COVID-19 data dashboard you'll see information about active clusters at schools but there is no identification of individual schools.

Mask up, everyone. It will help keep everyone safe.