Houston ISD campuses remained open for in-person instruction Monday, despite county COVID-19 statistics meeting a threshold that district officials had said would trigger the immediate closure of schools.

In the district’s reopening plan, Houston ISD officials wrote that employees would work from home and students would learn virtually if Harris County’s COVID-19 test positivity rate averaged more than 7 percent over a 14-day period. On Monday, Harris County’s COVID-19 dashboard put the 14-day average percent of positive tests at 7.4 percent.

Houston ISD officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Schools in Texas’ largest school district reopened for in-person instruction on Oct. 19, but 16 campuses closed the following day due to presumptive positive and confirmed cases of the new coronavirus. On Wednesday, officials walked back their criteria for closing campuses due to infections, requiring there be at least two confirmed cases of COVID-19 before shutting down individual school buildings. Previously, a single suspected or confirmed case would trigger a campus closure.

Michelle Williams, president of the Houston Education Association and a math interventionist at Kashmere High School, said she worried Houston ISD officials were “moving the goalpost” on their COVID-19 plans by not closing down campuses after the county positivity rate rose above 7 percent.

“Teachers come with it and expose students, and vice versa, and then it goes home and you have more community spread,” Williams said. “If you look at the coronavirus, it’s an exponential growth model. Based on what’s happening across the nation, we know the positive rate is going to increase.”

Schools across the state are limited in how long they can close after COVID-19 infections under current Texas Education Agency guidance. School districts themselves set their own criteria for when to close individual campuses due to positive cases of COVID-19, but TEA rules say campuses can be closed for a maximum of five days.

Entire districts were allowed to spend the first four weeks of the school year online, and school boards could apply for a waiver that would allow them to remain virtual for an additional four weeks. Houston ISD’s waiver to keep students learning remotely expires Nov. 2. Texas Education Agency officials did not immediately respond to questions about district-wide closures outside of the 8-week waiver window.

However, TEA did grant a two-week waiver extension to El Paso ISD, and several other school districts after that area experienced a surge in COVID-19 cases that has strained local hospitals. El Paso education officials said on Twitter that TEA would monitor COVID-19 conditions and review the waiver extension on a week-to-week basis.

Unless such a waiver extension is granted to Houston ISD, the district cannot close all of its schools due to the community spread of COVID-19 alone after Nov. 2.

Williams said she hopes the state will allow HISD to return to remote instruction.

“I’m confident if they have done it for one school district, they’ll do it for HISD,” Williams said

Southwest Houstonians have a greater burden of chronic disease than residents of other parts of the county and state, according to a new survey.

The survey, conducted by the Texas Health Institute, identified neighborhood conditions as a major reason why southwest Houston’s diabetes rate is 72 percent higher than Harris County’s overall rate and why its hypertension rate is 60 percent higher than Memorial Park’s and 33 percent higher than Hunter’s Creek’s.

Many Southwest residents can’t afford or access fresh produce and issues like crime and a lack of walkable space are barriers to exercise.

“These are deep-seated problems that time hasn’t changed,” said Nadia Siddiqui, director of health equity programs for the Texas Health Institute. “What came back loud and clear in the survey is that area residents know it’s not just about health care. They know that safety, access to healthy food, and other socioeconomic factors are just as critical to their health.”

Siddiqui said COVID-19 not only exposed but further exacerbated southwest Houston’s challenges. She called the area’s conditions “a perfect storm” even before the pandemic hit and emphasized that making the community better able to withstand future crises will require a greater investment in the area’s health infrastructure.

The survey was commissioned by the Memorial Hermann Health System in connection with its initiative to tackle issues that contribute to chronic disease at the community level rather than wait for people to show up at its hospitals. The initiative includes upgrading parks, a partnership with the Houston Food Bank, and school-based clinics.

Dr. David Callender, president of Memorial Hermann, said the system hopes to create a model for how to improve the health of other communities based on the initiative. He said southwest Houston, where the system has a hospital and existing programs, is “at the top of the list of Houston’s neediest areas.”

“Most hospitals today focus on treatment, the core of what we do,” said Callender. “But treating the same patient for the same preventable condition doesn’t help the patient or the community’s overall health. We must find a way to prevent illness in the first place. We need to focus on health as well as health care.”