EDCOUCH — In an emergency meeting Tuesday, the Edcouch-Elsa ISD board of trustees approved additional leave for employees infected with COVID-19.
A release from the district describes the decision as an effort to prevent staff who test positive from exhausting their leave.
The additional leave is capped at five days, the release said, and will apply to all full time and part time employees, regardless of whether they’re contractual employees and regardless of whether they’re salaried or not.
“As we know, we have been hit with the latest wave of the coronavirus, which is the omicron variant, which is spreading very quickly in our community and throughout the state of Texas and nation,” Superintendent Greg Rodriguez said at the meeting. “And we wanted to make sure that all of our employees who…tested positive for the virus and had to quarantine because of testing positive would not be impacted negatively with their leave or with their pay.”
Local health pundits have described relatively mild symptoms in this wave of the pandemic leading to a shift in the public’s attitude toward COVID-19: for some individuals with mild cases, isolation is the biggest headache.
“Right now they’re aggravated that they have to be out from work five days,” Dr. Linda Nelson, UTRGV School of Medicine senior director of clinical operations, said Tuesday after helping to test about 200 people with mild symptoms at a drive-thru site in Edinburg.
“You know, I think a lot of people think it’s just a little headache or it’s allergies, and go to work,” she said. “Then you find out a day later that Aunt Susie was positive over Christmas or over New Year’s when you went for dinner, and lo and behold you’re positive and you went to work.”
Rodriguez said via email Wednesday that the district has an increase in staff who have tested positive for the virus, an increase the district expected.
“Fortunately, we have been able to adjust our internal staff to continue providing instruction to our students,” he wrote.
The additional leave resolution will expire at the end of the school year, unless other action is taken by the board superseding it.
“We thank the Board for their urgent attention to the current situation of the increasing spread of COVID-19,” Rodriguez wrote in the release. “And, most importantly we thank you for ensuring that our children continue to learn in the best possible environment.”
