TRI-COUNTY — The 2020-2021 school year is fast approaching — and with it, a whole slew of questions about what the new school year will look like. Will students have to return to in-person classes in August, when coronavirus will almost certainly still be a threat in Texas and the country? And what about other precautions, from social distancing to personal hygiene?
The Texas Education Agency said as early as June that it would reopen schools in the fall. That matches the stance of the U.S. Department of Education and President Donald Trump, who on Tuesday said he was “going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools.” But at the local level, where school officials must navigate worried employees and parents, the situation is more messy.
In Marfa, Superintendent Oscar Aguero announced on Tuesday that the school “will offer both face-to-face instruction and distance learning methods.” Parents, he said, will be able to choose “which method they prefer.”
In Presidio, Superintendent Ray Vasquez said in an email that Presidio Independent School District will also likely offer both in-person and distance learning but said they were still ironing out details. And across the state, school officials are dealing with conflicting information and a lack of concrete details from the Texas Education Agency, which is determined to get at least some students back in class as part of the state’s “reopening” efforts, even as case counts climb.
“As of today, we are still waiting on TEA for more definite reopening guidance,” Vasquez said. “Things change every day, but we will make the best decision to keep our students and staff safe while meeting the needs of all.”
At Marfa Independent School District, where school officials are also still awaiting more details, the lack of information on coronavirus plans has added to other challenges.
Local school officials already had enough to worry about with House Bill 3, a convoluted school finance and property tax reform bill passed in 2019. And those challenges will be particularly tough in Marfa, where gentrification and other factors have made property values hard to predict.
And while Marfa ISD has committed to distance learning, it’s less clear, Aguero says, what exactly in-person instruction will look like. While school officials initially wanted to do alternating days to limit the number of students in classes, TEA nixed that idea, saying Texas schools could offer alternate day schedules for the first three weeks, but then must allow all students who want to come to school to do so.
In a follow-up statement on Wednesday, Marfa ISD said it still wanted to hear parents’ “concerns and thoughts to better prepare for this upcoming school year.” In that vein, Marfa schools plan to hold a number of public meetings with parents on the Presidio County Courthouse lawn. Those meetings will be from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m., and from 5:30 p.m. until 7 p.m., on Thursday (today); Monday, July 13; and Wednesday, July 15.
Marfa school officials have spent months trying to figure out next school year — but the TEA, rather than helping, has often delayed those efforts. Back at a school board meeting in mid-June, coronavirus, though not officially on the agenda, loomed large in conversations.
At that meeting, officials did iron out some plans for the next school year. They decided, for example, to set August 10 as a tentative start date. Athletic Director Linda Ojeda discussed her plans to keep sport practices safe (including requirements that students bring their own water bottles and towels), and school administrators discussed the pros and cons of having staggered schedules, where students come into school at different times to increase social distancing.
Much of that meeting, though, was tentative. And when school officials attempted to iron out other details, Aguero demurred. He noted that he was joining a TEA conference call the next day, which he said would give Marfa ISD a better sense of its options.
That call, though, turned out to be largely fruitless. Only one concrete detail came out of the meeting: Students wouldn’t be required to wear face coverings or other personal protective equipment. “It makes it difficult for us to plan,” a frustrated Aguero said at the time.
But even on simple details like that, TEA hasn’t remained consistent. Shortly before press time on Tuesday, Aguero emailed with another update: Schools can require face masks in some situations after all, in line with Governor Greg Abbott’s new face mask requirements.
“Hopefully,” Aguero said in an email on Tuesday, “I will get a printed copy of the info soon.”
The TEA has flip-flopped on other issues, too. At first, TEA told local schools to give six feet of space between children in classrooms. They later revised to three feet. “They’re realizing that with older schools like us, we don’t have the space,” Aguero said. “We don’t have rooms to put kids in.”
“They’re telling us to follow the CDC,” Aguero said, summarizing the mixed messaging he’s received from TEA. The CDC has repeatedly said six feet is a good benchmark for social distance. But according to TEA, “you can go close to three feet if [students] are wearing masks,” Aguero said. “But again, we can’t require them to wear masks.” And then that rule also changed.
Now, almost a month and multiple TEA calls later, Aguero says he’s still waiting on more information. The agency has said it will fund remote learning and count at-home students toward attendance rates, which is part of how school funding is determined. But they will still require schools to go through with in-person learning, even if few or any students actually show up.
“I think there will be pushback on it,” Aguero said of those in-person guidelines. And indeed, a war already appears to be brewing between TEA and Texas teachers.
In El Paso, teachers have asked officials to push back the start date. And several teacher associations and unions have complained to the state, including the Texas State Teachers Association, which on Tuesday asked Governor Abbott to “slow down and put safety first before he allows school districts to begin reopening.”
“Teachers and students who fear it is too risky for their health to return to campuses must be allowed to teach and learn remotely,” a statement from the organization added.
But with some questions still unanswered and the next school year fast approaching, that situation is proving untenable. “We can’t wait anymore,” Aguero said. “We’re a month out of school. We had to start doing something.”
Other school administrators across the region have raised the same concerns. “I do agree with Oscar,” Graydon Carter, superintendent for Fort Davis ISD, said last month when asked about criticisms that TEA was moving too slowly in giving guidance to local schools. “I believe the commissioner at TEA [Mike Morath] is maybe trying to play it safe, in terms of not committing to one thing or another.”
The Texas Education Agency did not respond to a request for comment from The Big Bend Sentinel, seeking more information on a timeline for local school guidance and a statement for Commissioner Morath.
As local school officials deal with this uncertainty, that same unease is percolating down to parents. Take Jose “Joe” Grajeda, a Marfa parent who will have three kids in public school this year, including two third-grade boys and a daughter going into pre-K.
“I cannot wait until the last minute if we need to homeschool the kids,” Grajeda said in an interview Monday. “If we can stay at home, the school needs to tell us right now.”
On Tuesday, Grajeda got his wish when Superintendent Aguero committed to offering distance learning options. But with more details from TEA still pending, what exactly that will look like remains to be seen.
Despite the uncertainty coming from the top, Grajeda does feel certain one thing. His children won’t return to school, he says, until there’s a coronavirus vaccine. One of his children has asthma, and his wife — who is already taking online education classes — will figure out how to homeschool them if necessary.
And while Grajeda is happy with how Marfa ISD has so far handled the coronavirus crisis, he’s not too happy with Governor Abbott or other state-level officials. As he sees it, they’re more concerned about finances and partisan fights over Texas’s “reopening” than they are about the safety and well-being of students.
“If we tell them that they lose money by sending kids to school, then they’ll probably have them stay at home,” Grajeda added. “It feels like it’s always all about the money.”