With 536 COVID-19 cases impacting students and staff and more than 1,000 individuals quarantined since the beginning of the year, Ector County ISD Superintendent Scott Muri on Wednesday talked about the importance of doing something more to protect everyone.
The ECISD Board of Trustees at 6 p.m. Thursday in the board room of the administration building, 802 N. Sam Houston Ave., will consider a temporary mask requirement for students, staff and visitors.
The meeting is open to the public, but there will be executive session after the public comment period and then the board will come out and discuss the resolution and vote in the open.
If the board approves, the temporary mask requirement would take effect for staff on Friday and for students and visitors on Monday, Muri said during a media call.
“COVID is having again a dramatic effect on our children and one of the things we learned during the pandemic last year is the importance of having our children with us in a face-to-face environment during this time. As we look back and reflect upon last year, we see that children that were a part of our face-to-face learning environments had a much more effective experience. Learning for them was a bit more effective than those that engaged in our virtual environment last year,” Muri said.
“We want to do everything in our power to make sure that every child has an opportunity to be physically present every single day in our classrooms, and our early numbers because of COVID-19 indicate that many of our students and staff members are being forced to remain at home due to either getting COVID-19 or being quarantined due to exposure to COVID-19.”
“We have to do more to prevent that within our own school system and so tomorrow night our board of trustees will consider a resolution that will allow us to take another step to ensure the safety of not only our students, but our staff members as well,” Muri said.
At this time, Muri said he does not anticipate any legal repercussions from the resolution.
“In seeking wisdom from our own local attorneys and the Texas Association of School Boards, again at this time, we do not anticipate any legal repercussions,” he said.
