Vanguard tests staff District tightens measures
Side note: I just spoke with a good friend of mine who is my age. He sounded more than a little congested over the phone. I was halfway into my first sentence and I had to stop to ask him why he sounded so bad. Cold? I asked, hoping that’s what it was, already thinking it was something worse.
“COVID,” he said. This is his second rodeo. He caught the original variant, 2020, if I remember right, and only suffered very mild symptoms. He’s been vaxxed, boosted, and now here he is with the virus again helping him ring in the new year.
“When you got tested, did they say if it was omicron or the delta variant,” I asked.
“I looked at what was written down,” he said, “and it said (probably omicron). They said that omicron is now making up 95% of the cases across the country.”
Ninety-five percent, I asked him, so amazed I later had to confirm it via an online search. Yep, 95% of U.S. COVID cases are now courtesy of omicron (Source: CDC.)
When asked, my buddy listed his symptoms: cough, congestion, sneezing, watery eyes, fever, and a headache. He didn’t sound like he was having fun, and he’s a guy with a high tolerance for pain and discomfort.
So, who wants it? Not me. Now, the news story:
This is the tale of two school districts — PSJA ISD and Vanguard Academy — and how they plan on coping with omicron as the spring semester begins.
At Vanguard Academy, with its approximate 5,000 student population and staff of 729, Superintendent Narciso Garcia said Tuesday that when school starts Wednesday, Jan. 5, he expects 100% of Vanguard’s student enrollment to be present … in class.
At PSJA ISD, according to several sources who spoke under condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to speak for the district, across all districts, more than 50 percent of its student enrollment was absent when classes began Tuesday, Jan. 4. One high school, for example, was down one third of its student enrollment, while another school had even fewer students on campus. Some departments were reporting staff shortages of approximately 50 percent. Either workers were calling in COVID positive, or they were going to get tested, or they had to isolate because they had recently been in close contact with a COVID-positive patient.
At Vanguard, classes started a day later (Wednesday instead of Tuesday). When asked what percent of the student population he expects to see Wednesday (The Advance spoke to him Tuesday), school Superintendent Narciso Garcia said, “One hundred percent, Gregg.”
How is that possible? “Everyone is confident,” he said, “based on how we started the year, and everyone’s expectations remain high.”
In fact, Vanguard is going a step further this year, Garcia said. For the 10% who may be adamantly anti-facemask, the superintendent said remote learning is an option, but every student at Vanguard will be wearing a facemask without exception when classes begin this week. All of the schools and administration buildings will be masked, so to speak.
Garcia said that last year, the Vanguard board voted to approve a $765 stipend paid to teachers and support staff who would get vaccinated. Today, he said, approximately 95% of the charter school’s staff is fully vaccinated. Last fall, Vanguard had vaccine clinics every Saturday during the months of September, October, and November, offering vaccine protection to both students and staff.
As with the staff and teachers, the superintendent and board couldn’t mandate that students old enough to get vaccinated against COVID do so, but they encouraged them, held testing sites, and then offered the vaccine clinics.
Last week and early this week, the Vanguard staff was tested for COVID to make sure the semester started out right, said Garcia.
Among several other new protocols being implemented, Vanguard will change the way it has done its lunches and held recess. Both will be more restricted and more formalized so that students continue following safety standards even though class is in recess. The fun and games have to be tampered down, at least for the time being.
Garcia said everyone at Vanguard — students and staff — are pretty much on the same page as it relates to safety precautions. Of Vanguard’s 729 staff members, said Garcia, approximately 12% tested positive for COVID, and more than a few of them were completely asymptomatic. If they hadn’t gotten tested, they would never have known they were infectious, said Garcia.
If that 12% is a close representation of the number of COVID infected people in any public community, so to speak, then if one looks at a public school district like PSJA ISD, its approximate student enrollment of 30,000 and approximate 5,000 staff may prove problematic. With mask policies differing from school to school, the staff and parents may not feel safe. At least that’s what one PSJA ISD board member, Cynthia Gutierrez, is saying. According to the only female board member, the superintendent, Jorge Arredondo, has not said anything about how this semester is expected to proceed in light of Omicron, which is more infectious than the Delta variant.
On Board Trustee Gutierrez’s Facebook page this Sunday, she wrote this:
Dear PSJA ISD staff, parents, and students,
“Though I no longer have school-aged children and I don’t work for the district, as your Trustee, I worry about your safe return to school given the spike of cases and the speed in which OMICRON is spreading.
“To all those who are reach ing out by sending messages and calling, I want you to know that on December 28, Carlos Villegas and I reached out to our superintendent and other board members via email to request having a meeting and discussing the current COVID situation and what our plan would be to ensure everyone would be safe this second semester.
“We mentioned the surveys the unions conducted and the current COVID numbers. We also mentioned returning to testing regularly and adding re-infection COVID days so that those that are positive again don’t have to use their own days. There were several points we wanted to CONSIDER to keep you safe.
“To be fair, we did get a response from our attorney Benjamin F. Castillo, (who said) that he was looking at how to meet without having to call a special meeting. No one else responded after that. As I’ve said before, I’m EMBARRASSED that I have to watch other school districts take the lead on adopting measures to protect their families.
“I applaud those school boards that worked through their holidays to find a solution that works for them. Please ... if you have ANY symptoms, stay home. If you know you have been exposed, get tested and report it immediately. I want you to know that Carlos and I are here for you and pray for everyone’s safety. Continue to use your mask, get all your COVID vaccines, wash your hands, and keep your distance from others as much as possible. God bless us all!”
Back at Vanguard
Narciso Garcia, who came up through the ranks of Hidalgo ISD and PSJA ISD, working alongside PSJA’s former superintendent, Daniel King, the district’s COVID plan has always centered around safety as well as the idea that in-person education is vitally important to a student’s all-around being.
“Every student is important,” he said. “I remember hearing one parent once say to someone that we have to put things in perspective because all across the country, only a handful of kids had died from COVID, and I remember thinking, how hearing that would affect me if one of those children had been my child or grandchild. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”
According to Garcia, Vanguard’s staff has always attacked COVID head-on and taken to heart the importance of the education process and figuring out how to deal with it during a pandemic.
“We’ve always tried to work with this thought in mind — how do we maintain our high level of academic achievement, while offering support for our student’s social and emotional needs? All the while, figuring out a way to keep them safe and secure.”