Williams: Attendance above state average
At the Sulphur Springs ISD board of trustees meeting Monday evening, Supt. Michael Lamb passed out a data chart that provided tracking of COVID-19 cases for each campus in the district.
“Today [Monday], since school started, we’ve had 78 cases … that were positive for COVID-19,” Asst. Supt. Josh Williams presented to the board.
According to the chart, as of Monday, the cumulative total of students for all campuses was 46 with only three confirmed positive cases; however, there were 206 students in non-positive quarantine. For staff, out of a cumulative total of 32 cases, there were 10 positive and 16 in non-positive quarantine.
Williams explained that non-positive quarantine isn’t a positive COVID-19 diagnosis but are those who have been “identified as a high-risk exposure or were sent home with symptoms.” High-risk exposure is defined as a student or staff member who is unmasked and within 6 feet of another unmasked student or staff member for at least 15 minutes.
For those who have symptoms or have been exposed, Williams said there are different things to consider.
“For example, if someone goes home with symptoms, they can come back before completing protocol by either having an alternative diagnosis with a doctor’s note to return, or they get back to work [after testing negative for COVID-19]. If you’re a high-risk exposure, you’re out for 14 days from your most recent exposure, and that can change if you continue to have ongoing exposure. That has to do with how families deal with their exposure,” Williams said.
As of Monday’s meeting, Barbara Bush Primary had the highest percentage of active cases at 1.07% with four currently positive cases of COVID-19. The “lion’s share” of current non-positive quarantine cases for students is attributed to the football players at Sulphur Springs High School, out of a total of 70, who were expected to return to school Friday.
“I think the highest percentage we’ve seen was 1.4%, which would have been the high school. That translates to an awful lot of kids going to school,” Williams said.
This is the first year the district has had to track illness-specific data, Williams told the News-Telegram in a follow-up interview, calling the impact on the school district and the subsequent public health concerns necessitating tracking “unprecedented.”
Prior to the 2020-2021 school year, Williams said that the district has tracked only whether student absences were excused or unexcused, but not the specific reasons for the absences.
“We don’t chart exactly what ailment or illness it’s been. We’ve never had to track it,” Williams said. “It’s kind of what’s interesting about this whole thing, historically, as faculty and staff go out with the flu… and when kids are sick, we send them home, …and they come back when they get well.”
But with the current need for tracking COVID-19 exposure and subsequent contact tracing, the process has changed, even if the symptoms could be attributed to other illnesses.
“If they’re sick and have a fever, we’d send them home anyway,” Williams said, but now, that is charted.
It has changed the way attendance is tracked, as well.
“We tend to be just above the state average on attendance. Now, attendance is different with remote learning. Historically, that didn’t exist either,” Williams said.
In addressing attendance, Lamb presented to trustees a total of 4,327 students enrolled in SSISD, compared to 4,420 last year. He attributed the majority of the difference to parents either delaying their children’s enrollment in kindergarten because of COVID-19 and the rest to parents’ decisions to homeschool their children.
Total full-time, in-person students for the district are 3,501, and 826 attend virtually. SSHS has the highest percentage of virtual students at 23%, followed by Sulphur Springs Middle School with 20%.