BRENHAM ISD REPORTING 39 COVID-19 CASES THROUGH ONE WEEK OF INSTRUCTION

  
Brenham ISD Health and Safety Director Jamie Woodall presents a COVID-19 update to the Brenham School Board on August 16th.

With one week of classes in the books, Brenham ISD is reporting just under 40 active cases of COVID-19.

Adding up the totals from the COVID-19 dashboards of each Brenham ISD campus, the district is reporting 39 cases as of this (Wednesday) morning.  Of that total, 20 cases are in students and 19 are in staff members.  The campuses currently reporting the highest numbers are Brenham Junior High School at 11 cases, and nine each at Brenham Elementary School and Brenham Middle School.

Brenham ISD Health and Safety Director Jamie Woodall said these numbers are in line with the school district’s expectations.

 

 

Woodall said the district had to adjust how it handles notifications of positive cases in schools, following updated guidance from the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and feedback from a survey of parents over the summer break.  The district has shifted from “robo-calls” to email notifications, but if there is a group of people on a campus that test positive, a letter will be sent home with students who may have been in contact with that group.

Woodall said amid ever-changing circumstances, she believes the district is doing everything necessary to keep families safe.

 

 

Brenham ISD currently does not require masks to be worn, but some school districts around Texas, including area districts like Calvert ISD, are choosing to reinstate mask mandates.  This comes after a ruling last week from the Texas Supreme Court temporarily allowing them as litigation is resolved.

Note: The COVID-19 dashboard for a particular Brenham ISD campus can be found by going to the campus’ homepage, clicking on the Faculty Staff / Parents and Students tab, then clicking the dashboard link on the left side of the page.

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23 Comments

  1. The system needs to re-evaluate how they are telling everyone about the active cases on school! 39 in a week are you serious?! We as parents should know even if they are not in contact with this person! Hello isn’t this air borne if they are walking in the same schools it’s every where ! We should be noticed period that way if we don’t want our children going to school in the mess we can keep them home ! Some of us are always in close contact with relatives or the elderly with compromised immune systems! I’m ready to take my kid out of school now! Summer was awesome what happen all of the sudden now school is back in!

  2. Fully 9 months after the COVID-19 Vaccine were released, I would hope that the teachers that are teaching our children are doing their civic duty by getting vaccinated. We have lost 630 THOUSAND Americans to this very real global health crisis.

    We fortunate to have very effective and safe FDA approved vaccines. Many of our teachers are potentially exposing unvaccinated children [all children under 12 years old and many by choice ]. An adult exposing themselves to our child while not being vaccinated are being careless and immoral. This is most especially if the teacher is also NOT wearing a mask. I argue it is as careless as speeding or driving recklessly through school pickup line.

    Children have a RIGHT to feel and be SAFE at school. The C19 Virus is a threat to all especially the vulnerable. If I were a teacher I would have a hard time dealing with the afterfall of exposing a child and his family to a virus that came from my body. Heaven forbid the virus spreads from you to a vulnerable family member that developed severe health repercussions, such as respiratory failure or even death .

    We need stop thinking of just me.

    “In ethics, there’s this idea that you can do things as long as you don’t harm other people,” says bioethics professor Matthew Liao, director of the Center for Bioethics at New York University. “When you don’t get vaccinated, you’re putting people in danger.”

    Get over yourself and do something that is neighborly and in the best interest of society. IT IS JUST A VACCINE! How many vaccines have we had since we were born? I argue this is one of the most important vaccines ever offered to us.

    Ask your doctor. Ask your pharmacist. Trust your intimate circle of health care providers that you trust. Then take the dive. It is nearly painless. You will sleep better knowing you contributed to the solution rather that being part of the problem.

    1. They don’t mandate a vaccine for the flu which is deadly. People should still be allowed to make that choice. If parents feel mask should be worn, then make your kid wear it. Don’t try to enforce people that don’t want to wear it. It has been proven to be ineffective anyway

    2. Are you kidding me…. Doing their civic duty and get vaccinated.. What is wrong with people. You can NOT force someone to get a shot. you can NOT force someone to wear a mask. If the want to they have the right to but its their choice. There are no other respiratory illiness’ out there right now. Everything is COVID. Covid covid covid, im so tired of hearing about it. Take your shot, wear your mask and leave it at that if you’re scared. The rest of us that aren’t will live a mask and shot free life.

      1. Any parent with a child, someone in the military, etc knows full well that you can mandate a vaccine. What you say is simply not true and does not fit with reality or the history of the country, which has had vaccine mandates going all the way back to George Washington’s command of the Continental Army.

        1. Yes, when you sign up for the military you agree to get any and all vaccines they mandate. And agree to all of the other requirements that come with signing up for service. But you also voluntarily agree to submit to those requirements when enlisting. Our teachers have not signed up for the military. You’re comparing apples to oranges.

  3. 20 cases out of thousand plus kids in the school district isn’t bad. I know there are going to be people reading this and freaking out. To those I say calm down and realize that is a very very small number of sick kids. Remember if you’re worried and your child wants to wear a mask then let them. Please don’t try to force your fears on the rest of us.

    1. Yes, 20 cases in only 1 week that they’ve been in school…..hopefully no more…but again school JUST started

    2. 20 cases so far. School just started a week ago.
      And as a reminder, masks are less about keeping yourself well and more about not spreading your germs to other people. The very people not concerned about spreading germs are the same people not wearing masks. So your suggestion is not a solution.

  4. So far, 39 positive cases. We should pray for those affected and infected. Does BISD have a contingency plan to mitigate the spread of COVID infections? Online support for students quarantining at home? Common sense would dictate a Plan B for the safety of faculty,, staff and students as well as providing educational support for students “healing” at home. Our community does not need “talking heads”, political nonsense nor retarded rhetoric. We need a real solution to a real problem and not more of a “close our eyes and pretend COVID doesn’t exist” approach. The numbers will only go up!

  5. Out of curiosity, I wonder what the flu counts were in schools in past years? Those numbers have never been reported like our COVID counts. Are these reports just shared to create more fear amongst our community? What are we really solving at this point? These posts just create threads of angry opinions and the bashing of others. COVID has truly taken a toll on my mental health, I pray that we can all find peace at some point.

    1. Ask a doctor about that. The reason we had minimal cases of flu is that people were wearing masks. It just goes to prove that they actually work. But I guess some people are more comfortable taking horse dewormer.

      1. That’s actually not true at all, but I’m assuming you get your stats from Facebook. The states experiencing the highest infection rates are the states that are the least vaccinated and the first to remove the mask mandates. That would be Texas, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, South Dakota, etc.

    2. As a teacher in the district, I can tell you that the flu season of 2016 was absolutely insane. On my campus, we had between 100-150 kids out on any given day for several weeks. That, however, did not make the news!

  6. Why doesn’t BISD compare this to 2018 and 2019 records and let’s see how many students were ill and how many staff members called in sick. It amazes me how the flu and colds are nonexistent these days. I would also like to know how many people that have this COVID 19 were vaccinated. Tell both sides of the story not just a certain narrative to instill fear.

    1. I totally agree. You can still get COVID 19 even if you have had the shots, so to be honest the shots don’t protect anyone from getting this virus it only helps with the symptoms.

    2. 19 staff members could reach up to over 500 kids without a teacher for a few weeks. Which is about 10% of students which is a major deal. Then if we have more positive it only gets worse. Not to mention there is already a teacher shortage and substitute shortage. Back in the day when we had teachers out with the flu we could easily get a substitute, that’s not the case anymore.

  7. Keep the masks OFF!!! It doesn’t matter if you’re wearing masks, are vaccinated or not. IF A PERSON IS GOING TO GET IT,THEY’RE GOING TO GET IT.

    1. Let them move! Take the seatbelts and car seats out of the car. If a person is going to crash and potentially die then that’s just the way it is right?

      None of the safety rules, advice, etc matter.

      1. Jake,
        Then why not mandate the flu vaccine? It’s deadly. I am sure a lot of these Covid cases were actually flu cases. All is said that flu was not bad this year. Do you know why? Because they blamed it all on Covid and didn’t test for flu. I know many people that doctors said they had Covid and it was actually the flu when they went back and tested for it. Let the people make their own choices for themselves and their kids.

        1. First off, I’m not going to entertain the nonsense of COVID isn’t real and its mostly been the flu. It’s ridiculous. Flu wasn’t bad this past year because masks work against respiratory viruses and with the kids masks flu got squashed. Drs. don’t diagnose flu patients with COVID for the heck of it.

          However, what is so hard to understand the simple fact that this is a new virus that we are still learning about. We don’t know many things, including why it destroys some people and doesn’t others. We don’t know all there is to know about the long term implications of having it in adults and children. The flu is quite different. Yes the flu can be deadly but we know the flu and our bodies are primed for it.

          What kind of sick society just throws children who don’t have a choice into a petrie dish of infection and just says “oh well, lets see what this brand new virus does?” Why not have a little bit of humility in the face of something that people smarter than you and I both are still trying to understand?

          And this is not about your own choices. You are free to make them. Don’t want to get vaccinated? Fine, but let there be consequences since your choice to not be vaccinated directly effects the lives of me and my children. A vaccine mandate by schools or businesses do not force vaccination. It establishes consequences that you as a responsible, thinking person are free to consider. Just like with drunk driving laws, which don’t prevent you from getting drunk, but establishes consequences for endangering others while drunk. What you really don’t like is that there are consequences for your choice of not being vaccinated. That’s the kicker. For all of the Conservative blathering about personal responsibility, what you really don’t like is that people are now proposing that there be consequences for an action that you take.

      2. The type of masks that 99% of people wear, how they wear them, are the problem.
        Mostly useless in that respect.
        Even with the best masks and protocols people will still get this. It is how viruses work. Please calm down.

      3. You do understand that taking the covid shot or not isn’t based on a law while the example you gave is based on a law?

        You see THIS is why vaccine hesitancy.

        The extreme cases, RIDICULOUS comparison examples like this car seat one, fear mongering… but real data and common sense are countering it.

        COVID IS NOT going away.

        It WILL NEVER go V away, and it’s IGNORANCE to believe otherwise.

        These cases – believe it or not – SHOULD have happened a year-plus ago clap covid because as seasonal as the flu.

        FEAR by prolonged closures, wearing masks that are ineffective, etc. PROLONGED this.

        I’m not surprised on the numbers – no one passing any study in health is.

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