GRAPEVINE, Texas — Editor's note: The video above is from a previous story.
With hundreds of students and staff in isolation, the Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District in Tarrant County will shut down on Thursday and Friday because of a rise in COVID-19 cases.
GCISD, which serves about 14,000 students across 20 campuses, plans to return to class on Monday, officials said in a news release Wednesday afternoon.
The district will also take the time to clean all campuses and facilities.
The district reported 233 new positive student and staff COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, and 683 students are currently in isolation due to a positive test, officials said.
On Wednesday, the district needed 169 substitute teachers and only 76 of those positions were filled.
"While we have made every effort to continue in-person instruction, it has been negatively impacted for several days due to the increased number of student and staff cases," the district said in a statement.
The district plans to use an inclement weather day on April 18 to make up for the lost time this week. The district will also make May 25 a full school day for middle school students and also add two minutes to each school day, beginning Feb. 1, to account for all required middle school minutes.
The Tarrant County school district becomes the latest in North Texas to cancel classes to the surge of Omicron cases in the region.
On Tuesday, the Weatherford Independent School District in Parker County closed all schools and buildings for the rest of the week because of a rise in COVID-19 there. Weatherford students are expected to return to campuses on Monday.
In addition to students getting the virus, school districts have struggled with staffing shortages, from teachers and substitutes to bus drivers.
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 of those schools resumed class on Tuesday, but it remained unclear if the temporary closures did any good.
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.”
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.