Texas Schools to File Weekly Report of COVID-19 Cases

Beginning on September 8, Texas schools will be required to submit a report every week providing data on confirmed COVID-19 as their campus.

The fact that schools were going to be asked to provide information isn’t new.  A week ago, Texas Education Agency commissioner Mike Morath let public school district superintendents know that they will be asked to provide data on coronavirus cases for their schools.  However, at the time of that announcement, exactly what data was required, and the reporting frequency was not made clear.

Under what has been specified, a campus administrator will need to submit a report every Monday by 5 pm Central Time.  For schools that, including all of those in El Paso, that started school prior to September 8, any confirmed cases for this year must be included in that first weekly report.

The campus will be required to report COVID-19 cases they were made aware of that week as well as if these cases resulted in a school closure of any kind.  The report will ask for a running tally of cases (those already reported and any new cases for that week) and additionally they’ll need to specify if confirmed positive cases were contracted on or off campus.  The report also asks that they indicate if school was made aware of any cases by either an individual or a public health official.  Any faculty, staff, or student with a confirmed coronavirus infection must be included on the weekly report.

Hopefully, the information gathered from these reports can help school and health officials towards making informed decisions down to the campus level if need be.  For some districts, the situation at one campus might end up being completely different than that of their neighboring school.