Six TCSS Schools Closed Tuesday Due To Staff Shortages

Ryan Phillips
Updated ·1 min read

Editor's Note: This story has been updated to include the closure of Lloyd Wood Education Center on Tuesday.

TUSCALOOSA, AL — The Tuscaloosa County School System has added three more schools to its list of closures for Tuesday due to COVID-19 outbreaks among faculty and staff, coupled with a dire shortage of substitutes.

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TCSS Superintendent Keri Johnson informed parents on Monday that Brookwood Elementary Lloyd Wood Education Center and Duncanville Middle School had been added to the list of closures for Tuesday.

As Patch previously reported, the school system said last week that it planned to close Holt Elementary, Flatwoods Elementary and Cottondale Elementary on Tuesday.

Other TCSS schools will operate normally as they return from the long holiday weekend.

TCSS also pointed out that it will take a more surgical approach with school closures, opting to close individual schools when staffing is too low to operate for one day, as opposed to a systemwide shutdown of in-person learning.

The news of the additional closures comes amid a noticeable spike in COVID-19 cases locally and around the country, due primarily to the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the virus. In response, Tuscaloosa City School announced plans to reimplement its indoor mask policy beginning on Tuesday.

As Patch reported on Monday, DCH Health System in Tuscaloosa logged 116 total COVID-19 inpatients — the first time the health care provider has topped triple-digit hospitalizations since Sept. 26, 2021.

According to figures from the state health department, Tuscaloosa County has added nearly 3,000 new COVID-19 cases over the last week.

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This article originally appeared on the Tuscaloosa Patch