COVID Updates

July 17, 2020

Dear Catholic School Communities,

As an Archdiocese, we support our students getting back to their school communities and returning to face to face instruction with their expert teachers. We belong together, as a family and as a Church. Both the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and the American Academy of Pediatrics are also encouraging schools to reopen with in person instruction.

Today, the Attorney General of Texas issued guidance that recommends allowing religious schools to make their own determination whether to open with on-campus instruction. We are very grateful for this guidance.

School leaders have the ability to make site based decisions about their first day of school, and that date for most of our schools will be on or around the week of August 13th. It is our hope that all schools will be supporting face to face instruction by September 8th. For schools that are able, a remote learning option is being made available to parents that are more comfortable with their students learning from home.

Of course, this will require our schools to adopt new routines and protocols that will mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and keep our students safe. Certainly the health and safety of our students and staff are of utmost importance. These protocols will look different on each of the campuses due to the space and unique resources of each school campus. These protocols will include social distancing, wearing masks, limiting visitors on campus to only the office area as necessary, using signage as reminders for protocols, more frequently washing hands or using hand sanitizer when soap and water are not available, cleaning and disinfecting frequently touched objects and surfaces, providing instruction to students on the appropriate hygiene practices consistent with mitigating COVID-19, avoiding touching eyes, nose, and mouth, medical self-screening for symptoms, and staying home when sick. We will continue updating these protocols as needed.

Having our students back on campus is important not only for their academic progress, but it also supports their success in the areas of social and emotional learning. It will help them grow in their social skills, study habits, physical health, and spirituality. Having students back on campus also supports their daily nutrition in situations where their breakfast, lunch, and snack at school may be the only healthy food they have in a day.

We are grateful to our school leaders that have worked all summer to create “Returning to Learning” plans that will be approved by the Catholic Schools Office and made available to parents on the school’s website. Their heroic efforts will be the key to our success, and we are grateful to them for their tireless commitment to ensuring the best opportunities for our students.

We thank our parents as well for their continued faith in our Catholic schools as we strive to transform the world by forming disciples of Jesus Christ!

In Him we trust,
Debra Haney,
Secretariat Director and Superintendent of Catholic Schools