PREMONT, Texas — Earlier in September, the first Premont ISD employee tested positive for COVID-19. School district officials said that it’s the only case they know of since they started back in-person instruction in June.
That one case was enough to prompt the district to come up with a stricter policy that it feels will help to better protect students, their families and staff.
Premont Superintendent Steve VanMatre tells 3News that after one of his employees tested positive for COVID-19, he decided to make some changes. Now, a positive test will mean that anyone who was with that person in a room for 45 minutes will go into quarantine for 14 days. That’s where 51 students have been for the past week.
"Ultimately, we decided that we would error on the side of caution and subsequently, we had over 51 of our students, who none of them had close contact, but we quarantined them and now we’re in the eighth day of quarantine," VanMatre said.
The school had been using CDC guidelines calling for a quarantine of someone who had been within six feet of a COVID positive person for 15 minutes. The district now feels that’s not doing enough to protect the teachers and the 60-percent of the district’s students who are in the face-to-face classroom setting.
”If you have a positive individual and these kids are in a classroom for 45 minutes or more regardless of whether or not they’ve been in close contact they need to quarantine,” VanMatre said.
VanMatre also said the district is also looking at setting up a COVID-19 program to test students for the virus.
"We are soliciting health agencies to give us a plan and a cost for an oral swab," VanMatre said.
The president of our Corpus Christi American Federation of Teachers Union was happy to hear about the Premont quarantine plan. She shared with 3News an email that was supposedly sent out by CCISD administration to principals. It’s talking about spacing out students in the future by possibly four feet in the classroom.
The district’s standard classroom procedures right now call for students to sit six feet apart.
"We intercepted that memorandum and I immediately texted school board members and the superintendent and I said we will fight this adamantly full force if you go with less than six feet of social distancing and they were shocked that we knew, oh well," Dr. Nanvy Vera said.
A CCISD spokesperson said the district is reviewing options as it plans for Phase Three of the back to school plan. We were also told that nothing has been finalized. The district did point out these CDC guidelines for schools, which advises that schools should be, “maintaining distance of at least six feet from other adults and from students when feasible.“