El Paso, TX (NCC NEWS)- Covid-19 cases are at an all-time high in Texas. In El Paso alone, the number of positive cases has reached over 10,000. Even with this rise, schools are planning to open for in-person classes come the Fall. Private Catholic high schools Loretto Academy High School and Cathedral High School are making the necessary preparations to ensure the safety of their students.
President of Loretto Academy, Sister Mary Bosen, will put in place guidelines to ensure that students will be safe in school, as well as making sure that the students are healthy before they return. This includes temperature checks when the students enter, as well as sanitizing stations at each entrance of the building. The principal of Cathedral, Adolfo Sanchez, will also have the same guidelines when it comes to students’ safety, and will only allow 15 students in a classroom to ensure social distancing.
While the administrations may be ensuring parents that kids will be safe at their schools, some parents are still worried about sending them back. Two parents, Yuri Fernandez who has a daughter attending Loretto, and Veronica Veytia whose son attends Cathedral, are still worried about their safety.
“I will never feel safe enough,” said Fernandez, “Will I send her to school, if the school opens up? Yes.”
“I’m more comfortable with him starting online and seeing what happens,” said Veytia, “than sending him immediately.”
The schools are also known to have students that come over from Juarez, Mexico. To ensure their safety, Bosen stated that they are allowed to attend school in the U.S as long as they are citizens, saying, “education is deemed essential by the government and those parents will be allowed to bring their students to school.”
Even with all these precautions in place, schools are still unsure if they will be able to open for in-person at all. All they can do is wait and see if there will be any changes between now and September.
