As I posted on Bloomz earlier this evening, the Trivium Academy Board of Directors voted to close the school August 27-September 6 due to a high rate of positive COVID-19 cases in students and staff over the past week. The health and safety of our students and staff is a top priority, and almost every grade level in our K-11 school has been affected. I was able to discuss our situation with the Chief Epidemiologist from Denton County Public Health (DCPH) and Dr. Acosta from ESC 11 before our board meeting today. The COVID-19 School Case Response Rubric from DCPH that was part of the decision-making process is attached.
In the conversation with DCPH, our case numbers and contact tracing were discussed. It was noted that when the virus is so widespread that contact tracing becomes almost impossible, it is time to consider closure. On Monday, we reported to the state 36 test-confirmed cases of COVID for the previous seven days. By mid-afternoon today, we had received notification of an additional 20 cases.
Anecdotally, we know that there are far more cases among our school population. We know that some pediatricians are telling parents that if one child tests positive that they can assume the siblings are also positive if they become symptomatic. Since those siblings are not test-confirmed, they do not factor into the total number of reported cases. We also know that there are some who are symptomatic who are choosing to not test or choosing not to report positive cases. Again, these do not factor into our total number of reported cases.
We are hoping that the closure of 11 days will allow our students and staff to quarantine and/or recover. We highly recommend that you use this next week and a half to isolate if possible. We need to break this cycle of exposure and rapid spreading and have our Knights come back on September 7 as healthy as possible.
We will be open tomorrow for any students whose parents still need to make arrangements for their care. However, we strongly recommend that students stay home if possible to prevent another day of potential exposure. If your child is symptomatic, has been a close contact to a positive case, or is waiting on test results, we urge you to keep your child at home tomorrow.
Our teachers will be at work on Friday to prepare for the return of our students on September 7. We will be working on ways to practice more social distancing and making sure that our other COVID protocols are firmly in place. We want our school to be a safe and healthy place for all of our Knights, and that includes wearing masks. Because of the litigation involved with mask mandates, the Board voted to take the recommendation of legal counsel and continue following Gov. Abbott’s Executive Order. At the moment, while we could issue a requirement to wear masks, we would not be able to legally enforce it. We know when worn properly that masks help stop the spread of several communicable diseases such as COVID, strep, and flu. While we are not issuing a mask mandate at this time, we are pleading with you to help protect our Trivium community by having your child wear a mask at school.
This is a school closure, and we will not be providing remote instruction during this time. This closure will result in only five school days being missed as September 3 and 6 were already marked as student holidays. We have four extra days of minutes built into our calendar, and the board voted to turn the student holiday on October 11 into a school day. With the use of the extra minutes and the addition of October 11, Trivium Academy will still be at the required 75,600 minutes for the school year.
We had high hopes that this year would be smoother, but the highly contagious Delta variant of COVID-19 is making it more challenging than ever. Please know that we will continue to diligently work in the best interests of our students and staff. We love our Knights and want them to have a safe and healthy learning environment.
Proud to be a Knight,
Sheryl Bradley
Superintendent
Trivium Academy
#buildingthinkers
