On Tuesday, March 2nd, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that he would end the statewide mask mandate and would allow all businesses to operate completely and at 100% capacity.
The decision of the Texas government to jump from one crisis (the deep freeze that led to the death of dozens of Texans and the institutional failure of the power companies and government) to another (a free-for-all COVID extravaganza when only 11.6 percent of Texans have had one dose of the vaccine and 1.5 million fully have been vaccinated) is confounding.
The news was not just about adults going to the grocery store or bars or restaurants, however. It has major effects on how schools in Texas will operate going forward — and also could lead to a national rise in COVID-19 cases just as cases have begun to level off and vaccination rates climb. Here’s what parents in Texas (and across the country) need to know.
What Does End of The Mask Mandate Mean For Schools?
Abbott said in a radio show that school districts and school boards can make their own choices when it comes to wearing masks, etc. This is despite the fact that literally all federal guidance from the CDC, public health experts, and more say that mask-wearing in schools is a full-on requirement for staying open without driving up cases or leading to death and illness.
As such, big school districts like Dallas Independent School District (DISD) said they will continue to follow CDC guidelines. The same is true with Fort Worth ISD, Cedar Hill ISD, and other districts. School districts in Lockhart, Leander, Round Rock, Hays CISD, and Pflugerville ISD, according to local news station KXAN, will still require masks inside buildings, while AUutin, Eanes, and San Marcos ISD will continue to enforce their current protocols – unless the TEA changes the game.
About half of kids in Texas are attending public school right now — about 2.9 million students in all — and the reality is that, while school districts have been following CDC guidelines to the best of their ability, teachers have not been free of illness.
According to The Dallas Morning News, nearly 70,000 staff members in public schools around the state have had COVID-19 and about 120,000 students have since last August in data that was updated at the end of February. If the mask-mandate is done away with at certain schools or in certain districts due to people playing politics rather than listening to the most accurate and data-driven health guidance, that number could skyrocket.
And while districts can, for now, continue to set their own COVID-19 guidelines, they will be waiting with baited breath until the Texas Education Agency weighs in on new guidance later this week. This isn’t that dissimilar to what happened over the summer, but the new backing down of mask mandates puts the TEA in a hard, firm spot of deciding what school districts will have to do.
Statement from the Texas Education Agency:
“Governor Abbott’s Executive Order (GA-34) takes effect next Wed., March 10, 2021. Updated public health guidance from TEA will be coming this week.”
— Texas Education Agency (@teainfo) March 2, 2021
Hopefully, they decide to maintain firm mask and social distancing guidelines and adhere to the recently updated CDC guidelines that provided layered protection for reopening schools.
What Does It Mean For The Rest of the Country?
Well, namely, Texas does not live in a vacuum. The decisions that Governor Abbott makes about mask-wearing, social-distancing and limiting capacity in private businesses could cause such a rise in cases that will reverberate around the country just as some have begun to see the light at the end of the tunnel re: COVID-19. After all, borders are porous.
Travel to and from Texas is not regulated — cases will spread not just within the state but across the country just like they did at the beginning of the pandemic with other places like New York City.
Students and teachers could get more sick, depending on not just what the TEA says, but how parents and community members act as a result of the new announcement and what they do. After all, schools can only reopen safely insofar as community members follow public health guidelines and engage in COVID-19 mitigation strategies (so the CDC, and public health experts, say.)
With those guidelines being thrown out of the window, it’s hard to look ahead and not see a trainwreck that will hurt many, many people, especially people who work in hospitality, who will have to contend with customers who don’t want to wear masks and won’t have the backing of state mandates to protect them while enforcing those rules. People will get sick. This is not a “what-if.”
And, of course, it feels avoidable. The vaccine is here. Herd immunity is on the horizon. While mask-wearing may be a reality for a while, some aspects of life could change by 2022. The decision to jump the gun, so to speak, will be a disaster.
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