CHEROKEE COUNTY, Texas — Like many other East Texas school districts, Wells ISD temporarily shut down its district because of COVID-19. While they were planning on re-opening today, Superintendent Jill Gaston said they've pushed back their opening until September 7.
"We had pretty much just a line out the door as far as the nurse's office, we realized that it was time to time to act and do something," Gaston said.
On August 24, Wells ISD sent students home after lunch with the hope of returning after a few days. But after sending out surveys to parents and talking with the Cherokee County Health Department, Gaston says everyone agreed that delaying their return is the best decision for the district.
"We were running about 19% of our kids showing symptoms. When you have that many kids out of the classroom, it creates an environment that you can't really move forward for fear of leaving kids behind," Gaston said.
It's not just students showing symptoms. Around 15% of teachers are showing them also.
For now, they're not doing any sort of remote learning or virtual conferencing and it's not something Gaston thinks is a great option for their district.
Wells is a small rural East Texas city, and Gaston said their infrastructure does not consistently support what's needed for it to work.
"If we do you have to go to some type of online learning, we would have to do it as paper-based as possible," Gaston said.