By Brian Argabright
Any hopes of Del Rio High School’s UIL activities resuming this coming week were dashed Friday afternoon.
The San Felipe Del Rio CISD released an update regarding face-to-face learning and extracurricular activities just before 5 Friday afternoon. Addressing the suspension of UIL activities
that was supposed to end this week, Dr. Carlos Rios, school district superintendent, addressed the community’s positivity rate before dropping an addendum to the suspension update.
“Unfortunately, the 6-day positivity rate and the number of active COVID-19 cases continues to remain dangerously high,” Rios is quoted as saying in the release. “Due to these current circumstances, we have no recourse than to continue encouraging parents to have their children attend school online until the circumstances in our community improve.”
Rios then added that all UIL and extracurricular activities would remain suspended through the end of January 2021. The initial suspension of activities began Jan. 6 and was intended to last two weeks. Rios said activities would resume, but only if two standards were met.
“Here’s what’s going to happen moving forward. There are two things that need to happen before we resume activities. First, the positivity rate in the community has to decrease to the levels it was at prior to the Christmas break. Hopefully we get the notice that the positivity rate is decreasing,” Rios said on Jan. 6. “The next thing that will happen is that three days before practice resumes we will be holding antigen testing for our kids in UIL activities to determine if any of them are positive. The only bad thing about the antigen test is that it doesn’t necessarily pick up everybody that is positive. You can test negative and still be a carrier and be contagious, but it will still give us some indication as to where we are in regards to cases.”
According to numbers provided by the local health authority for the city of Del Rio and Val Verde County, the positivity rate currently for the community is 39.69 percent over a six-day period. On Dec. 21, 2020, the day the school district’s winter break began, the positivity rate was 14.67 percent. It was 35.90 the day the suspension of school district’s UIL activities was announced.
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District leaders have been continuously monitoring reports from the local heath authority and the current circumstances within our community. This week the LHA reported that as of
Thursday, Jan. 14, Val Verde County had 1,381 active cases and a six-day positivity rate of 39.69%.
“Unfortunately, the 6-day positivity rate and the number of active COVID-19 cases continues to remain dangerously high”, explains SFDRCISD superintendent, Dr. Carlos Rios. “Due to these current circumstances, we have no recourse than to continue encouraging parents to have their children attend school online until the circumstances in our community improve.” Dr. Rios added that all UIL and extra curricular activities will remain suspended through the end of January 2021.
“We, at SFDRCISD, continue steadfast and ready to serve children whose parents cannot support online instruction. Our school system remains open to any student opting to continue with face-to-face instruction”, concluded Dr. Rios.
