Thank you for subscribing to Texas Education News

This page references
link(s), website(s)
and or document(s)
from articles in the
Nov. 16, 2020, issue.
(Vol. 37 / Issue 36)

Note:
Older links may have expired
and/or may,
no longer be available
due to circumstances
beyond our control.

Texas Education News
is not responsible
for the content of documents and other information
that may be obtained from outside sources and websites.

• Struggling students — Setting the criteria (see the Nov. 5 update in this document) schools must use before requiring remotely instructed students to return to their campuses for in-person instruction if they are struggling academically or have had poor attendance.

  Students affected are defined as having a class average of 70 or below and/or having three or more unexcused absences in a grading period.

  Districts must give the parents of the affected students at least two weeks prior notice of the return-to-campus requirement, and parents can appeal either by submitting a medical exemption form provided by a health care provider (on a TEA authorized form), or by requesting to be exempted during a meeting (that can be held virtually) with school officials.

• Health guidance — Updating the Public Health Planning Guidance in a number of areas — including by clarifying that individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19, but are asymptomatic, can’t return to the campus until 10 days have passed since the positive test.

  The guidance also defines that a person is considered as being in “close contact” (within six feet) of a person who tested positive for COVID-19 for a total of 15 minutes throughout the course of a day as opposed to being exposed for 15 consecutive minutes at a time.

• STAAR testing guidance — Addressing issues related to the December 2020 STAAR administrations.

• The guidance notes that — due to processing requirements — the TEA is not able to extend the paper testing window by two weeks, as was done for online testing.

  The guidance also notes that students must be on campus or at a “monitored testing” location (as defined in the guidance) when taking their STAAR tests.

• COVID-19 Rapid Test Kits — The TEA reported (in email to TEN) that as of Nov. 4, 268 school systems and charters have opted in to receive free COVID-19 rapid test kits (see TEN, Nov. 9).

  Of those, 89 districts have received their initial allocation of kits and the remaining have either had the delivery of their kits scheduled or their orders are in progress.

  A total of 598,725 tests have been requested and 321,040 tests have already been distributed.