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Eustace ISD to extend Thanksgiving Break after 84 students, 12 staff members quarantined due to COVID-19

Thanksgiving Break will now start on Monday, Nov. 16 and go through Friday, Nov. 27.

EUSTACE, Texas — Eustace ISD has extended their Thanksgiving Break due to COVID-19.

The district says the extension comes after 96 people (84 students, 12 staff members) were sent into quarantine due to COVID-19 exposure.

Superintendent Dr. Coy Holcombe released the following statement in regards to the extension:

"I hope this email finds you and your family safe and healthy. As always, we have been monitoring the COVID-19 situation both at school and in our community. Right now, we have 14 confirmed positive student cases in the district and two confirmed positive staff cases in the district. Twelve of the confirmed positive students are at the High School. While the number of positive cases is not dramatically high for our district, any positive case is cause for caution. I want to thank you for all the help that you have provided in keeping the number of positive cases relatively low. We absolutely could not accomplish this without the help of all of our families.

We also have 84 students in quarantine and 12 staff members in quarantine at this time. The majority of the students are at the Primary School and the High School. Quarantine students have been exposed to a confirmed positive case of COVID. Again, I want to thank everyone for your assistance and understanding with our quarantined students. I know that it has not been easy.

Each year, we design extra days into our school calendar in case of bad weather, flu outbreak, etc. This year, with COVID being present, we designed even more extra days into our school calendar. Right now, we have about 10 extra days built into the 2020-2021 school calendar.

We are going to use five of those days to allow our positive cases to recover and to allow our quarantine students a chance to get back to face to face learning. We are going to extend the Thanksgiving holidays an extra week. Our Thanksgiving holidays will now start on Monday, Nov. 16 and go through Friday, Nov. 27. We will not have an early out this Friday. Extracurricular activities may continue during these extra days. Classes will resume at regular times on Monday, Nov. 30.

This will allow us to have three full weeks of instruction and then we get another two-week break for our Christmas holidays.

Also, EISD has applied to have the ability to offer COVID testing to our staff and students. This application has been approved and we are sending staff members today to become trained in testing procedures. These tests will be free for our staff and students. Students under 18 will require parental permission to be tested. We will find out today how many tests we will have available. I will send out another email with more information regarding COVID testing."

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