Teachers, parents, HISD need clarity from TEA

Even as all eyes are on the election, the coronavirus pandemic worsens and parents of children in the Houston Independent School District must decide by Nov. 13 whether to send their children to school in person for the next six-week period or keep them at home learning virtually.

My older daughter, a freshman in high school, started back inperson the second six weeks. We sent her because she needed to meet some classmates. Her school also chose to use a hybrid model, which made it feel safer for her to go. My daughter in middle school, however, has stayed home. I have not decided if we will continue remote instruction or move her to face-toface learning. I’m feeling unsure of what would be the best decision for her; since the beginning of the school year, safety standards have changed and some have disappeared. That’s unacceptable for students and teachers. We need the state and districts to work together on science-based standards.

Everyone has taken a crash course in public health this year. However, families with schoolaged children had a steeper hill to climb during this time. We mastered recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for opening schools and compared them to guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics. We cross-referenced those guidelines with safety plans the Texas Education Agency, school districts and campuses developed. We worked to understand documents stating desks will be 6 feet apart “where possible,” studied information about campus ventilation systems and asked whether or not desk shields would be allowed in classrooms. We wondered if teachers felt safe returning in-person.

The Houston Independent School District created the Communicable Disease Plan and the HISD COVID-19 Gauge. The plan contains the policies and procedures the district and campuses will follow when coronavirus cases pop up in schools. The gauge stated concisely what activities are allowed to occur on campus at specified levels of community spread, as measured by Harris County’s 14-day positivity rate. Both documents set high standards that parents knew could require schools to close frequently for positive COVID-19 cases. However, we also knew protecting the health of everyone on campus was the top priority.

Small course corrections are expected in newly charted territory. HISD quickly adjusted campus closure requirements for positive cases during the first week of in-person classes. Rather than shut down for one presumed case, a school would close for two confirmed cases. I knowI was surprised over a dozen campuses reported cases and promptly closed under the first standard that week. That change made sense because frequent and abrupt campus closures are difficult for families to navigate.

However, when HISD stipulated concrete measures on the COVID-19 Gauge and then ignored them, I was among the many who became reasonably concerned. HISD created a community spread threshold stipulating a 7 percent positivity rate in Harris County would trigger a move to online instruction with students remaining at home. In the past weeks that community spread standard was met and promptly disregarded by HISD. The district then discarded the metric by removing all thresholds from the

COVID-19 Gauge. As a result, families do not know when schools could close due to infection rate increases. This change breaches the trust families had in the district. Teachers also took to social media and expressed dismay that their health and safety are not valued by HISD.

HISD walked back the positivity rate guidance for returning to virtual instruction largely because of rules written by TEA governing how districts are required to handle the pandemic. The rules state, “School systems must provide on-campus attendance as an option for students.” Translated, this means HISD must provide in-person instruction to students who have chosen it for the district to continue to receive its funding from the state. This provision removes the HISD Board of Education’s authority to mandate virtual-only instruction based on the virus’ spread in Harris County. The state used this mandate to sideline our locally elected officials and prevent them from deciding what is best for students and employees in HISD regarding the pandemic. While it is true that TEA granted waivers to El Paso and other hard-hit areas to allow those districts to keep instruction exclusively virtual, the state has full discretion over who receives one. There is no guarantee one will be given to districts requesting them.

Families and employees need to know when to expect campuses to remain open for face-to-face instruction and when to expect them to close. We expect clarity from our leaders about how they will make these important decisions. The current uncertainty adds an extra layer of stress to all of us during this anxious time. TEA and HISD must urgently work together to create a sciencebased contingency plan that defines when community or campus-based spread of COVID-19 warrants campus and district closures. Any agreedupon metric must be widely communicated to families and employees. TEA must agree to fund the district if it follows the plan and HISD must implement it with fidelity. Only then will families know our students, their teachers and their administrators are valued and as safe as possible on-campus.