(AP)– Texas school officials decided Monday to add a month to spring semesters in all colleges and universities in the state because of the rising COVID-19 cases in January.
The new measure will affect 20,000 students currently enrolled at UTEP and EPCC, who will have only July and two weeks of August for a summer break.
The extra month is an effort to recover lost school days and staffing shortages, Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath said.
“College students have lost time. And, because of that, they are failing in their classes and not graduating compared to two years ago,” he said.
EPCC President William Serrata, who voted in favor of the measure, does not see summer classes being affected.
“Summer classes will be pushed towards August,” Serrata said, predicting an increase of $250 in tuition for summer classes.
Colleges and universities reopened their face-to-face classes last fall, but are struggling to keep students from getting infected in the midst of a coronavirus surge caused by the omicron variant.
The semester has barely started, and so far, there have been 192,145 student COVID-19 cases and 61,142 staff cases, according to the Texas Education Agency.
That appears to be the highest case level since the pandemic began in 2020, although the data collected by the state is often incomplete.