CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — New guidelines from the Texas Education Agency have sparked concerns as the new school year approaches. The TEA is not requiring schools to inform parents of positive COVID cases this year.
"Everybody's saying 'well, sign up for K-12' we did he's on a waitlist and it could take up to months," said Vanessa Briones, a mother of two.
Briones has two kids, Nathaniel who's nine and Bella who's three. She's worried about sending her son back to in-person learning. He was born with type one diabetes, and he and his family are considered high risk to COVID-19.
"I, myself, have diabetes," Briones said. "His grandparents next door, they have hypertension. They're elderly. He has an aunt with epilepsy next door."
His mother isn't comfortable sending him to school because of the uptick in COVID cases.
On Thursday, the TEA released their public health guidance that said ''upon receipt of information that any teacher, staff member, student, or visitor at a school is test-confirmed to have COVID-19, the school must submit a report to the Texas Department of State Health services via an online form."
Nowhere in there does the TEA require schools to inform parents of a positive case. Schools also don't have to conduct contact tracing, and the TEA said parents can still choose to send their kid to school if they were in close contact to another person who tested positive.
Briones said parents need be kept in the loop.
"We don't know whether or not to quarantine our child," she added. "It is concerning that he's under the age of being vaccinated with a three-year-old in the house."
She's even tried enrolling Nathaniel in other school districts but couldn't. So recently she made a petition to get the attention of Governor Greg Abbott to fund virtual learning, and it's getting noticed.
"I have over 500 people singing up, so I know I'm not alone," she added.
If virtual learning isn't available to her son, she will have no other choice but to send him to in-person learning.