District gets creative to beat Abbott on masks
When German film director Wim Wenders’ “Paris, Texas” premiered in 1984, Parisian Texans in the audience at the downtown Grand Theater might have been surprised — and perhaps disappointed — that the movie completely ignored their tidy, little city northeast of Dallas. Nearly four decades later, easy believers in East Texas stereotypes might have been surprised that Parisian elected officials would dare defy a craven, overbearing governor whose primary concern is not the well-being of his fellow Texans but his own political ambitions.
That’s exactly what happened last week, though, when board members of the Paris Independent School District came up with a novel strategy to undercut Gov. Greg Abbott’s outrageous executive order forbidding Texas schools from implementing mask mandates in the midst of a raging, shape-shifting pandemic. Board members ruled that masks were under their school dress-code purview, and if they have the right to determine midriff exposure and the snugness of skinny jeans, then they have the right to require masks. (To save the lives, it goes without saying, of students, teachers, administrators and their extended families.)
Dennis Eichelbaum, the Paris ISD attorney, contended that as long as the state’s education law remains in place, school districts have the exclusive right to govern themselves. The attorney argued that unless Abbott decides to use his emergency powers to suspend that law, districts can institute mask mandates.
“We’ve always had dress codes. It’s very common in Texas,” he told the Chronicle. “And this is no different, really, than saying we’re requiring our students to wear shoes.”
Eichelbaum characterized Abbott’s executive order as vague and inconsistently enforced. He alluded to requirements that students wear face masks during welding class or that baseball catchers and football players rely on face protection. Amending a dress code to include masks to protect against COVID-19 is no different, he said.
Several dozen school districts across the state, including Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, also have defied Abbott’s order, but Paris’ clever approach exposed the governor/ emperor’s absurd new clothes. To put it bluntly, Paris made Abbott look like a fool, particularly since he himself found out he was COVID-positive shortly after he issued his order.
The governor and Attorney General Ken Paxton have been thwarted, for now. On Thursday, the Texas Supreme Court dismissed their arguments on a technicality, without ruling on their legal merit. Also on Thursday, the Texas Education Agency announced that the governor’s mask order is not being enforced as schools open across the state, due to ongoing litigation.
Make a point one morning this week to drive by one of those schools, preferably an elementary school. Try to time it so that you come to a halt before the hand-held stop sign of a stern-faced crossing guard. Take a look at the kids trooping toward their campus in the crosswalk behind her. Still wearing shorts and T-shirts because of the August heat, weighted down with brand-new, brightly colored backpacks, they’re also wearing masks. The coverings across their beautiful, young faces are no big deal (except for the fact that they’re saving lives).
In Paris and in Port Aransas, in Brownfield and in Brownsville, those youngsters are the primary concern of every Texan we know. Most Texans are not all that interested in the political dreams of a Trumpian Texas governor and his hapless Sancho Panza of an indicted attorney general.
Here are the facts, obvious to all but the most ideologically blinkered:
• As a result of the delta variant, which is three times more transmissible than the original, COVID is surging, particularly among the unvaccinated. Every day, as many as 10,000 Texans find out they’re infected; every day, on average, 100 die.
• New daily cases have increased by 37 percent during the past two weeks.
• Hospitals and intensive care units across Texas are overwhelmed, which means that COVID-19 patients aren’t the only ones who may be left in a hallway or an ambulance bay. Anyone who suffers a heart attack, a stroke or a snake bite may be out of luck, as well. Hospital workers are exhausted.
• William “Bill” McKeon, president of the Texas Medical Center, told the Chronicle’s Lisa Gray last week that 18 percent of all new cases so far in August are children. Pediatric wards at TMC and across the state are bracing for a rush of patients as vaccine in eligible children return to school.
• McKeon also noted that more and more young adults are being infected. “And we’re losing them,” he said. “Imagine having to turn to a 20-year-old and tell them you’re about to turn them over and put a respirator down their throat and paralyze their body. Then they don’t feel so invulnerable. It’s heartbreaking to see. But the politics have been blinding. People have been misinformed.”
Speaking of politics, Abbott and Paxton aren’t giving up. Their ambition drives them, Texans’ health and safety be damned.
That’s why responsible public officials can’t give up either, whether it’s the Paris school board members or Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo and her 253 counterparts across the state, or Mayor Sylvester Turner and his fellow city executives in communities large and small, or Houston ISD Superintendent Millard House II and his fellow school leaders. If they’re sued or fined, they’ll be just fine as long as the people in their care are, too. Texans who want what’s best for our communities and our kids will find a way to make our leaders whole for doing right by us.
The federal government also needs to step in. President Joe Biden said last week he would authorize the Department of Education to take legal action against states that block COVID-19 precautions.
Texas voters must step up during these difficult times, as well. Whether they’re Republicans, Democrats or independents, they must not tolerate candidates for public office who brazenly flout the public good.
History has a way of telling shorthand truths. George Wallace, for example, was a fourterm Alabama governor and a formidable presidential candidate, but he’s known these days primarily as “the man who stood in a schoolhouse door” for his defiance of a court order allowing two black students to attend the University of Alabama.
Years from now, when today’s mask-wearing youngsters are adults, their shorthand label for a certain pandemic-era governor may be “the man who opened the schoolhouse door — to COVID.” Surely, that’s not the legacy that Gov. Greg Abbott seeks.