With the first day of school scheduled Monday, Aug. 8, Garland ISD staff recommended policies that shift the focus from preventing COVID-19 outbreaks to accepting the risks associated with one.

Director of Health Services Renee Kotsopoulos presented a series of staff recommendations to the GISD Board of Trustees during its regular meeting Tuesday, July 28.

In Kotsopoulos’ presentation to the board, she pointed out an overall increase in COVID-19 cases year-over-year. In the last two school years, January marked a spike in cases.

“This leads to the conclusion that we have good safety measures in place,” Kotsopoulos said. “We do the best that we can do. It’s a virus and it’s uncontrollable when it spreads through our schools, but we can try to limit cases in our district by putting in precautions.”

Kotsopoulos said Garland ISD’s policy will shift to an “act, don’t react” approach which focuses on handling cases with contact tracing. Staff was recommended to react more calmly to a spike to keep from alarming students in the event of an outbreak.

“We might have a COVID surge, but we don’t need to react to it anymore,” Kotsopoulos said. “We know that we will get through it. It will peak and it will go back down.”

For the full story, see the July 21 issue of The Sachse News.