Texas school system closes after 2 teachers die of COVID-19

Authored by apnews.com and submitted by Dont-Do-Stupid-Shit

WACO, Texas (AP) — A Central Texas school district closed its schools until after the Labor Day holiday Tuesday after two teachers died last week of COVID-19.

Connally Independent School District officials closed its five suburban Waco schools for the rest of the week after the Saturday COVID-19 death of Natalia Chansler, 41, a sixth grade social studies teacher at Connally Junior High School, said Assistant Superintendent Jill Bottelberghe.

Chansler’s death came days after David McCormick, 59, a seventh grade social studies teacher at Connally Junior High, died of COVID-19, Bottelberghe said.

It was not immediately known if either teacher was vaccinated.

Connally High School football coach Terry Gerik says the Cadets will play La Vega as scheduled Friday night.

The school has had 51 confirmed COVID-19 cases since classes began Aug. 18, Bottelberghe said Monday. She added that more cases had been confirmed in the last few days, but she did not know if any have been directly traced back to Chansler.

“We have not found any correlation” between the two deaths, Bottelberghe said. “They were at two different grade levels even though they worked under the same content area, but we have recognized that there has been an increase in spread as far as throughout our student body at those two grade levels.”

In a Monday email, Superintendent Wesley Holt said the hope “is that the closure and holiday break will provide those who are positive with the virus or exposed to others with the virus, the time to isolate and recover. This closure will also allow time for deep cleaning and sanitizing of all CISD facilities.”

The rolling seven-day average of new daily COVID-19 cases in Texas was 15,400 cases as of Sunday, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rolling seven-day average of daily COVID-19 deaths in Texas was 200 per day.

madmaker on September 1st, 2021 at 03:22 UTC »

"...closed its schools until after the Labor Day holiday Tuesday"

Oh good. They're closing for a week.

Avocadosareawesome on September 1st, 2021 at 03:17 UTC »

I’m in Louisiana. 1 week after school started my son was exposed and we all caught covid from him. Thankfully we are all fine now. We are vaccinated except for my son who is only 5 and 8mo. My husband works at a different school and he says 40 kids were sent home yesterday because of covid. It’s a total shit show and definitely going to get worse.

audierules on September 1st, 2021 at 02:50 UTC »

I can’t imagine being a teenager right now and hearing news that your teachers are dead. I actually think in the entire 12 years I went to public school I don’t ever remember hearing of a teacher dying.