Teachers union scraps Cy-Fair lawsuit

Educators against return to campus for training cite short time before school starts

The Cypress-Fairbanks chapter of the American Federation of Teachers dropped its lawsuit against the state’s third-largest school district Tuesday, ending a legal battle aimed at preventing Cy-Fair ISD from mandating that teachers return to campuses for in-person professional development.

The union had argued that bringing teachers back to schools before the first day of the academic year Sept. 8 would lead to COVID-19 infections and make it less safe to reopen schools for in-person instruction.

In notifying the Texas Supreme Court that it would drop the suit, attorneys for the AFT chapter wrote that the brief time left before the start of school made it impractical to continue.

A state District Court judge in Harris County had sided with the union Aug. 14, issuing a temporary restraining order against the district. That order meant that the district had to give teachers the option to do their professional development online or at physical campuses. However, the Texas Supreme Court on Sunday suspended the order, and Cy-Fair ISD administrators notified teachers that they must return to their schools Tuesday.

Katy, Humble and Clear Creek ISDs, along with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, filed legal briefs to support Cy-Fair ISD. Attorneys for the three districts argued that teachers are essential workers and therefore that schools are excluded from “the occupancy limits established for other types of private and public entities.” Paxton wrote that the District Court did not have the authority to issue the temporary restraining order.

Attorneys for the union wrote that “given the short time frame for the events at issue in the lawsuit, the Supreme Court’s stay substantially impairs the ability of the plaintiff to secure meaningful re

lief for its members within a meaningful time.”

Teachers in the 117,000student district did ultimately report back to work Tuesday.

The lawsuit was not the first effort to try to get CyFair

ISD to change its reopening plans. More than 50 teachers and supporters protested outside a school board meeting Aug. 10. Twenty of them asked the board to offer professional development online and to delay the start of in-person instruction, but the reopening plan remained the same.

The next day, officials at the district’s Andre Early Learning Center sent a notification to parents that an employee tested positive for COVID-19 that afternoon. The message said the employee was self-isolating at home, but district officials would not comment on their status.