With COVID-19 levels on the rise with no signs of stopping any time soon, school districts across the country that have returned to in person learning have been greatly affected.

“I feel its affected students ability to learn in the classroom apposed to online so i feel it’s hindering students ability to learn, you do have those kids who can the remote learning, but I feel that some students need that personal instruction to get the knowledge that they’re needing, it’s affecting attendance, I work in the attendance office and it’s really hurting our attendance, we’ve never had 80% attendance but it feels that the last few days or weeks our attendance is in the mid to low 80’s so that’s definitely showing that kids and staff are out sick and that makes it hard to get back to normal with all of these people out sick,” Attendace clerk Stephen Juarez said. 

As of right now, almost half of the student population at Vets has been infected with COVID-19, as well as a majority of the teacher staff. This has affected the district monetarily, as well as academically. As KRISTV reported, CCISD is currently undergoing a staff and bus driver shortage, which is affecting the districts attendance funding as well as academics. 

“Financially, the entire country is dealing with this right now, and schools are funded based on average daily attendance, so when average daily attendance drops, so does school funding, but what we’ve seen since the pandemic started is the state and TEA, being flexible in funding and understanding of the current situation and being able to fund our schools appropriately, and not just rely simply on average daily attendance to fund our school, principal Scott Walker said. 

These rising infection levels along with the new Omicron and Flurona variants are also begging a question among the student and parent community of CCISD. Which is, “Will school shut down and go back to virtual again”? With the CDC and Governor Greg Abbott not taking any new action to the rising cases and variants. It’s hard to tell for sure. 

“That decision will not be made on a campus level, that decision will be made on a district level, I do know that the district is widely aware of the surge that we’re dealing with and they’re carefully monitoring the numbers to ensure that we can appropriately staff our buildings, so I can’t tell you yes or no, I don’t know and I think that the district is very aware and they’re closely monitoring the situation and they’ll make decisions that they feel they need to make for the safety of our students and our staff,” Walker said.