Coppell High School is seeing its first spike in COVID-19 case with the district dashboard reflecting 29 positive student cases as of this afternoon.

“We sent home 59 kids [on Wednesday],” CHS Principal Laura Springer said. “Not all kids are positive, but they’ve been around somebody positive so we have to quarantine them so they don’t get [the virus] at school and spread it. Here we are, sending kids home left and right; all I’ve done the last 24 hours is contact trace and try to figure out how to keep everybody safe.” 

Per Center for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention guidelines, students and staff are quarantined for being within six feet of an individual who tests positive for 15 minutes (cumulative) with or without wearing a mask, including eating in the same room less than six feet apart, having direct physical contact or having an infected individual cough or sneeze on you. 

Recent events, such as homecoming events last weekend, are thought to be possible reasons for the dramatic increase of cases this week. 

“We are really working hard on tracing kids and doing the right thing by sending home the kids that need to be sent home, but parties kill us,” Springer said. “[Fear of missing out] is killing us, because nobody wants to miss out on a homecoming party.” 

CHS placed many rules and regulations to ensure that students [remain] as safe as possible on campus. Following CDC guidelines and placing regulations, such as wearing a mask, socially distancing and disinfecting surfaces are keeping the school sanitary. 

“We’re still learning a lot about [COVID-19],” CHS Assistant Principal Chris Gullner said. “Our actions in school, out of school and where we come in contact with can be a mystery. So as we grow in knowledge and understanding of the virus itself, hopefully we can have more measures to keep the spread low. I would recommend following all CDC guidelines and all CISD safety protocols to reduce the spread so that we can keep our numbers low here and keep everyone safe.” 

With the upcoming holidays, Springer is worried that students may have large gatherings, increasing the chance of bringing the virus to the building. 

“I’m anxious to see how we do over Thanksgiving break and Christmas break because when you get families together that don’t follow the guidelines, it wreaks havoc on the school,” Springer said. “We just want to keep students and teachers safe. I can have a thousand rules in this building. But when people go for the weekends and come back and bring it back to our students, staff and teachers, there’s not a lot I can do about that.”

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