An 11-Year-Old Was Hospitalized for COVID. Her Mom Wants Schools Closed.

A mother from a small Texas town is fighting to shut the school district down after her 11-year-old daughter came home sick from school and was eventually hospitalized for COVID-19.

“The school system has no mask mandates,” Terri Gurganious told ABC 13 on Tuesday. "No social distancing, they have nothing in place to keep our kids and staff safe."

Just one day after starting the new school year at Buna Junior High, half an hour east of Houston, 11-year-old Brennah Gurganious came home from the nurse’s office with nausea and dizziness. She tested positive for COVID-19, and her condition quickly worsened until she was hospitalized and put on a ventilator.

Now Brennah is recovering, but her mom is furious and starting a movement to demand that the Texas school district be shut down and all classes moved to at-home learning. 

“This right here pisses me off beyond belief,” Gurganious wrote in a Facebook post. “I am so distraught over this. If we kept our kids home and not sending exposed kids or faculty to school this wouldn’t have happened.”

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who was diagnosed with COVID last month, has issued executive orders banning all mask mandates in Texas schools, and while some districts have fought those restrictions, Buna isn’t one of them. This leads to about 50 percent of students wearing masks, and around the same percentage of school district families getting vaccinated, according to Bruna Independent School District Superintendent Donny Lee. 

Paired with a Texas legislature arguing and stalling, Lee says his school district is being hit hard.

“It’s been an extremely difficult situation with little guidance from the legislature and state officials,” Lee said, in an interview with VICE News. “I want to keep students like Brennah safe and healthy—and we are doing everything we can at the moment.” 

Currently 82 of Bruna ISD’s 1514 students have COVID-19, and 17 out of 284 staff according to an online COVID-19 tracker the district created for families. This has parents like Gurganious worried for their children, as the Delta variant sweeps across the country, infecting and hospitalizing far more children than earlier variants.

“It doesn't matter how healthy you are, how active you are, what age you are,” Gurganious told 12 News Now. “It does not discriminate.”

So far, Gurganious has rallied about 10 percent of the school district’s parents behind her, according to Lee. However, Lee says the problem comes down to funding and decisions made by state officials. 

“Closing down and going to asynchronous learning literally isn’t an option,” Lee said. “We don’t have the capability or funding to do so until the legislature approves funding like they did last year. Asynchronous learning is never going to happen until we get the funding, it’s literally not an option.”

If Buna ISD were to pay for transitioning fully to online without government support, Lee estimates it would cost the district between $6.25 and $6.5 million.

In the meantime, the superintendent said he’s encouraging all families to get vaccinated and wear masks in public spaces. But until the orders come from the state, he said his district is at a standstill.

“By law you have to go to school,” Lee said. “We cannot just shut down the school and we don’t have the funding for fully online classes—it’s just not an option.”

Still, funding or not, Gurganious is concerned that students of the district are at grave risk if schooling continues the way it is. 

“Please  pull your kids out now and show them we will not stand for this,” Gurganious wrote in Facebook post. “It’s never gonna stop till they shut it down or someone dies and it sure as HELL isn’t gonna be my child.”