Before any musical organization can perform, it need two things - a place to rehearse, and a venue in which to perform. Right now we don't need a venue because we have no place to rehearse. For years we have had the opportunity to rehearse in band rooms in the Arlington Independent School District. When COVID-19 hit, the District shut down schools. Although they have re-opened for the time being, we have not been offered the go-ahead to rehearse there.

2020 has been a strange year

A year in which the whole World Series was played in Arlington and the Texas Rangers were not even in it. All kinds of college and pro sports were either cancelled or delayed. The State Fair of Texas was nothing like it had been in the past. Mardi Gras for 2021 has been cancelled.

NBC5/DFW

As more testing is done across the state, raw numbers of positive tests will continue to climb. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the positivity rate is one of the metrics they rely on to determine the spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus because it will show the daily percentage of those tests that are positive. In early to mid-April, the positivity rate averaged more than 10%. As the rate dropped, Abbott moved forward with his Open Texas plan to allow some businesses in the state to resume operations. Beginning June 23, the rate climbed above 10% -- the threshold Abbott said would be cause for alarm and remained there until early September when it finally dropped back below 10%. The state later added two other positivity indexes, renaming the original metric the Reported Date and adding positivity indexes based on the date the sample was collected and on the date that the lab confirmed the sample as positive.

Dallas Morning News

Update: This story was updated Nov. 18 at 2:15 p.m. with the latest reported case numbers. Arlington ISD opened its doors to in-person instruction on Sept. 28 and since then there have been 523 positive COVID-19 cases reported throughout the district. The district created a weekly updated COVID-19 tracker to display how many positive and active cases are at each school. As of Nov. 10, there are 171 active COVID-19 cases in the district among 67 staff members and 104 students.

Salute 2020-2021