Chaos, Fear and Resistance in Texas Schools
As schools prepare to reopen in Texas this fall, a sense of alarm and foreboding, mixed with anger and helplessness, has gripped parents with school-age children. Despite a surge in the delta variant, and with available ICU beds dwindling to just a handful in major cities like Austin, Governor Abbott has responded by doubling down on his “open Texas” platform: By executive order, Abbott decreed that Texas public schools cannot impose mask mandates and that vaccine mandates will remain prohibited in the state.
“Governor Abbott has been clear that we must rely on personal responsibility, not government mandates,” said a spokesperson via printed statement. “Every Texan has a right to choose for themselves and their children whether they will wear masks, open their businesses, or get vaccinated.”
That personal responsibility also apparently comes with blinders on. Under law, and contrary to common sense health practices, Texas schools have no obligation to inform parents of a positive Covid-19 case in a school and aren’t required to do any contact tracing to follow up on an infection. In cases where there is contact tracing and parents are informed of a potential exposure, parents can elect to still send their child to school, even if they were in close contact with an infected classmate.
The hypocrisy of the policy has drawn public ire. Critics have noted that the notification rules around lice, which is a pest but isn’t potentially deadly, are far stricter. Under Texas Education Code Section 38.031, if a child has lice the parents are notified as soon as practicable, and then every parent in that child’s classroom must be notified, too. Further, for decades Texas schools have required immunizations for other diseases such as diphtheria, measles, mumps and hepatitis. To require vaccinations or masks to help prevent the spread of a far more communicable and deadly disease in the middle of a pandemic surge is hardly out of step with established law and precedent.
In keeping with their “safety rules for me, not for thee” theme, the Texas Senate, which is controlled by the GOP, imposes strict Covid testing requirements for senators and staff. Specifically, the legislative body requires a negative test for anyone seeking to enter the Senate floor. Further, only members of the public who test negative and are given a wristband are permitted to attend the Senate gallery or committee hearings.
The evident double standards have many asking what the Texas GOP and Governor Abbott truly are up to and how their actions can be understood. The hard truth is that Abbott and his party have backed themselves into a corner by capitalizing on the politics of anti-government mandates, from masks to vaccines. Their radical base of supporters has been indoctrinated to resist any form of what they have labeled “government control.” In Abbott’s case, having staked out this position for over a year and bet his political future on it (Abbott has presidential ambitions), he has painted himself into a corner from which there is no ready escape. Both Abbott and Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida can now only hope that the carnage from their failure in leadership subsides in time for the electorate to forget come re-election.
Localities have begun to fight back against Abbott’s edicts. In Austin, the Independent School District decided to defy Abbott’s orders, following the lead of school districts in Florida determined to protect students and oppose the dangerous no-mask mandates rule in that state. Dallas Independent School District also voted on Monday to impose a mask mandate in defiance of the governor, and Houston, which has the largest school district in the state, is weighing defiance as well with its superintendent now also publicly in favor of a mandate. Threading a fairly small legal needle, and perhaps deciding it’s better to protect kids and staff now and ask harder questions later, the Dallas ISD stated in its FAQs that, in response to the no-mask mandate order, “Gov. Abbott’s order does not limit the district’s rights as an employer and educational institution to establish reasonable and necessary safety rules for its staff and students. Dallas ISD remains committed to the safety of our students and staff.”
Governor Abbott has yet to respond to these districts, but if he’s anything like Governor DeSantis, it won’t be pretty—and this is, after all, an apparent race to the bottom. In his response to school districts opposing him in Florida, Gov. DeSantis directly targeted the decision-makers who had defied him, threatening to withhold pay for supervisors and superintendents responsible for the mandates. “[A]ny financial penalties for breaking the rule would be targeted to those officials who made that decision,” his spokeswoman said in a statement.
It’s not hyperbole to state that local heroes are now being called upon to oppose deadly, nonsensical rules just to keep kids safe in schools in Texas and Florida. Parents—and voters—should remember this come 2022 when both of these far-right governors stand for reelection.