A central Texas school district closed its schools for the remainder of the week due to the deaths of two teachers from COVID-19 last week.
Connally Independent School District (CISD) officials closed their five suburban schools in Waco after the COVID death of Natalia Chansler, 41, a sixth-grade social studies teacher at Connally Middle School, the assistant superintendent said. Jill Bottelberghe.
Days earlier, David McCormick, 59, a seventh grade social studies teacher at Connally High School, also died of COVID, he added.
It was unknown at the moment if they were vaccinated. Authorities plan to reopen the campuses after the Labor Day holiday in the United States, which is September 6.
High school soccer coach Terry Gerik said the Cadets will play La Vega on Friday night as scheduled.
The school has 51 confirmed COVID-19 cases since school started on Aug. 18, Bottelberghe said Monday. More cases were confirmed in recent days, the official said, but said she did not know if any of the cases had been linked to Chansler.
“We haven’t found any correlation” between the two deaths, Bottelberghe said. “They taught in two different grades even though they were working under the same content area, but we have recognized an increase in the spread to our student body in those two grades.”
In an email Monday, Superintendent Wesley Holt said the hope “is that the closure and the holiday will give those who are virus positive or exposed to others to the virus time to isolate and recover. This closure will also allow a deep cleaning and sanitization of all CISD facilities ”.
The average daily new COVID-19 cases in Texas over the past seven days was 15,400 as of Sunday, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The average daily death from COVID-19 in Texas for the same period was 200.
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