AS BISD SEEKS SOFT-OPENING WAIVER, HEAD STARTS TO OPEN

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

Even as the board of the Brownsville Independent School District seeks a waiver from Texas Governor Greg Abbott to delay a soft opening that could result in a limited in a face-to-face instruction situation until 2021, the county's Head Starts are going forward with a full opening this Monday.

Head Starts, which instruct students of ages 0-4, plan to have all 57 centers provide face-to-face instruction while requiring Personal Protective Equipment which will include face coverings, shields, long sleeves, and social distancing for all teachers, aides and students. In some centers, workers will try to place hula hoops around them to try to enforce the distance.

CEO Head Start (NINOS) Manuela Rendon relented last week after Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño and Pct. 2 commissioner Joey Lopez counseled her to exercise caution with opening the centers too soon as the county continues to record relatively high levels of infection.

Lopez said that as soon as one child that comes down with COVID-19 or infects a family member, the court would shutdown all the centers.

The BISD  board had passed its yearly schedule to open August 25 back in February, but the onslaught of the virus delayed a return to classrooms until Sept. 28.

At that time TEA wants all districts to have a soft opening where students who had no internet and devices like tablets and notepads and hotspots can come into the class rooms.

However, the onslaught of the virus here convinced the board and administration to petition the governor to postpone any "soft opening" until the end of the Fall semester. A unanimous board asserted its support for the waiver. Depending upon Abbott's answers to the waiver request, all students may not be required to attend classes until January.

And just this past Friday, Dr. Emilie Prot, regional medical director for Public Health Region 11 pointed out that hospitalizations in the region are still relatively high.

“Just yesterday in the state of New York, there were total hospitalizations of 482, and so we have more for our whole region than compared to the state of New York,” Prot said.

Region 11, as designated by DSHS, encompasses not just the Rio Grande Valley, but a total of 19 counties in South Texas — from north of Corpus Christi to Laredo and down to Brownsville.

“I think (in) comparisons of population, we have a lot less (in) population than the state of New York and we’re still having higher hospitalizations,” she said.

In the Rio Grande Valley alone, COVID-19 hospitalizations were at 402 as of Sept. 11, down from the peak of 1,606 on July 22.

“Even though our numbers are going down, our hospitalizations are going down, we still have to remain very vigilant,” Prot said. “We still need to be very careful.”

The county also reported another 40 individuals tested positive for the disease. Among those residents, more than 20 were under the age of 40 and two were under the age of 9.

At the Browne Road Head Start, a one-year-old baby came down with the virus and his whole family tested positive as well. The parents were told that they could not bring the baby to the center until cleared by a doctor

County employees – one employee from the county clerk’s office, one employee from the district clerk’s office and one employee from the sheriff’s office –  were also among the newly confirmed positive on Friday.

“Please continue to protect yourself, your family, and your loved ones and remain vigilant as the transmission of COVID-19 remains in our community,” Treviño sated in a news release. “Heed the advice and mandates in place for the protection of life.”

These newly confirmed cases raises their total to 21,983 cases in the county.