North Texas school districts that closed due to a winter COVID surge are reopening this week

DALLAS — Hundreds of North Texas schools extended their Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday breaks in hopes of stopping the lightning-fast spread of the omicron COVID-19 variant.

Many classes will resume Tuesday. 

But, it remains unclear if the temporary closures will do any good.

More than a dozen North Texas districts paused in-person learning late last week, blaming a rapid spike in the number of sick calls among teachers and other school staff members.

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Districts added one to three days off around Monday’s MLK holiday to try to give sick staff five days off in a row to recover.

Pilot Point ISD in Denton County is among the eleven or so districts scheduled to return Tuesday.

Superintendent Todd Southard told WFAA, “While we will still have a few out, it isn’t anything like we were experiencing before we closed.”

Some districts extended their breaks through Wednesday.

This is not the first time that schools have closed for a few days to try to stop a COVID surge.

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Many Texas schools did the same thing within the first few weeks of the fall semester.

Dr. Mark Casanova, a doctor at Baylor Scott and White and past president of the Dallas County Medical Society, said in September, “Temporary pauses can help to stop spread in the moment.”

“But when individuals re-gather in that same setting, there needs to be implementation of other mitigation factors - such as masking - to prevent an on-off, on-off scenario,” he added.

The positivity rate among COVID tests administered in Texas remains high.

The state’s most recent data was released Friday, showing 34.5% of all PCR tests coming back positive.

Cook Children’s in Fort Worth said Monday that 44.7% of all tests its doctors are administering are coming back positive.

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“When the positivity in the community is this high, it’s really hard to shield the vulnerable,” Cook Children’s pediatrician Dr. Bianka Soria-Olmos said during a media briefing on January 12.

Helen Clifford, mother of a Forney ISD student, said she was surprised to just get notice on Thursday that her son would not have school on Friday. 

Forney ISD canceled classes Friday, but students return Tuesday. 

"I didn’t know anybody who had COVID last year and now I know a lot of people," she said. "It’s hitting schools a lot harder."