Anxiety mounts for parents as districts finalize guidelines
Fewer options, precautions offered despite surge
Carissa Baldwin-McGinnis has a little more than a week until school starts — and a big dilemma.
Her 7-year-old daughter was born with a hole in her heart and has Down syndrome. She benefits the most from in-person learning in the classroom, but her underlying health conditions could make her particularly vulnerable to COVID-19.
“The virus can cost her her life,” Baldwin-McGinnis said. “I’m very concerned that my child is going to be at greater risk this year because public schools won’t keep doing the same safety practices they followed last year.”
With the school year set to kick off as early as this week in some districts, Baldwin-McGinnis is one of many parents across the Houston region expressing a mix of frustration, confusion and anxiety as they prepare to send their children back to classes amid a surge of COVID-19 infections that is straining area hospitals and prompting alarm once again from local officials.
Uppermost among those concerns, of course, is the possibility young and unvaccinated children could become ill from the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus. Children under 12 are not eligible for any vaccines currently on the market.
For parents, the questions extend to the schools, as well: Will administrators notify them if their child has been exposed to the coronavirus? Will the same health and safety protocols in place for the last 18 months still be in force? Will students and teachers wear masks? Will
remote learning be available? Will children exposed to someone with COVID-19 have to quarantine for a time? If so, how will they catch up?
“It is painful as a parent to feel like I can’t influence my children’s learning environment to protect her and keep her safe,” said Baldwin-McGinnis. “We have so little we can do.”
All Houston-area school districts have spent the summer working to answer those kinds of questions and formulate plans for the 2021-22 academic year. Some of that work still is going on as school leaders have sought more help from the Texas Education Agency.
The TEA issued new guidance last week, allowing schools to offer up to 20 days of remote instruction for students who become ill with the virus or have to quarantine following close contact with an infected person.
TEA previously had said there would be no virtual schooling during the 2021-22 school year because the Texas Legislature did not provide funding for online learning.
Additionally, under the new guidance schools will not be required to perform contact tracing when infections are confirmed, nor will they be required to notify parents when their children have been in contact with an infected person.
The guidelines are viewed by some as a reasonable first step, but parents still say they have a lot of questions about how districts and schools will operate.
At least nine districts in Greater Houston — La Porte, Texas City, Santa Fe, Spring Branch, Pearland, Katy, Galveston, Clear Creek and Conroe ISDs — say they plan to notify parents when a student tests positive for COVID-19.
Plans and policies in other districts vary and many said they still were reviewing the new TEA guidance and finalizing their start-ofschool plans.
“All these questions are still being discussed and ironed out,” said Art Del Barrio, director of communications at Pasadena ISD, where school begins Aug. 17. “(It) would be negligent to comment until decisions are made.”
Humble and Conroe ISDs appears to be the only districts in the region so far with plans to offer remote instruction for the upcoming year for students who had signed up for it. A district spokeswoman said the district would pay for it through its fund balance or federal COVID relief money. Almost a third of the district’s students opted for online instruction last year. Aldine ISD may do the same. District officials did not earmark federal relief funds for virtual learning in its plans, spokeswoman Shaleah Reed said.
“However, we know that the funds were designed to accelerate learning and mitigate the spread of COVID,” Reed said. “Based on that description, the funds could be used for virtual learning.”
Remote instruction was a popular choice in Aldine ISD last school year, with nearly half the student body remaining online.
At Houston ISD, the largest public school district in the state, new Superintendent Millard House II said earlier in the summer that 100 percent of student learning would be on campus.
House surprised many Thursday when he announced he would propose a mask mandate for all students and staff in HISD facilities and buses to the school board next week. If approved, the mandate would go against Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order barring schools and government agencies from enacting mask requirements.
“The rate of COVID-19 cases is rising in our communities and Harris County is now at threat level red,” House said. “We must remain vigilant and use every tool we have to keep this virus at bay. Therefore, the mask mandate will become effective upon board approval.”
While the district intends to keep some safety measures in place — such as plexiglass dividers and limited campus visitation — it will forgo other practices, according to the back-to-school plan. For instance, the district’s current plan says there will be no formal screening and encourages individuals to self-monitor for symptoms, check temperatures and stay home when sick. Additionally, limits on capacity and attendance have been lifted. A more thorough plan is expected to be released soon.
In Montgomery County, Marissa Mapes, a 42-year-old mother of two elementary school-age kids, said she has been pressing Conroe ISD officials for answers to her questions before school begins Wednesday: What will be considered an outbreak? What will students do if a classroom is shut down?
“I wish I knew what steps are being taken for public safety to turn this around for the better,” Mapes said. “Is there any plan? I wish there was a plan.”
Montgomery County Public Health Authority Dr. Charles Sims told district boards and superintendents it was their “responsibility” to strongly recommend and require masks and vaccinations.
“Until the current wave of new COVID-19 infections is over, mask utilization and a continued push to achieve higher levels of vaccination are the only ways to keep schools successfully open,” Sims said in a letter that can be found on Conroe ISD’s website.
In La Porte, Tricia Cave, mother of a teenager, said she may resume the practice of having everyone in the household take off their clothes when they get home and putting them in the washer.
A couple of weeks ago, Cave said, her daughter went to a cheer camp in Galveston. About half her team since has since tested positive for COVID-19, she said.
“As an educator, it is very frustrating to me because I saw what worked last year,” said Cave, who teaches high school in another district. “This year it’s like, ‘Let’s just throw caution to the wind and throw everybody into a room at the same time and just hope it works out with no masks.’ It is just nonsensical, in my opinion. I don’t understand. So, I am really nervous.”
Roxanne Werner, whose son will be a second-grader in HISD, said she initially was “really, really” nervous when he was set to return to in-person instruction last fall.
She said she felt better after reading the district’s precautions and because there remained an option for him to learn virtually.
Now she worries about protocols that will not be in place, including capacity limits that promote social distancing.
With school set to start Aug. 23, Werner said she is nervous once again. She has told her son to wear his mask and wash his hands. She plans to check his temperature herself. Any sniffle or cough, she said, will result in him staying home.
Werner said she considered sending her son to a private school that will require masks, but the cost and availability forced her to put that idea aside. She also considered finding a virtual school, but said that would be difficult because she works full time.
“I have been just rolling every possible scenario around in my head and there is not a good one,” Werner said. “At this point, I am just hoping with everything I have that the governor will listen to everybody, right?”
She was referring to Abbott’s ban on mask mandates.
Not everybody wants a mask mandate, though.
Charles Titus, the father of a Lamar CISD student, called requiring children to wear face coverings “borderline abuse.”
“My kids and I have never masked up — not one time — and we’re fine,” he said at a gathering of parents asking Fort Bend ISD to keep masks optional at the school system’s administration building on Wednesday.
Titus also said he does not want his children to receive the vaccine because “they don’t need it.”
At Texas Children’s Hospital, Dr. Carol Liu said she has been seeing children sick with COVID-19 almost every day.
“People think children can’t get sick with COVID,” the mother of two said. “That’s just not true. Working on the front lines, I’m seeing children that require intubation in an intensive care unit.
“It’s not worth the risk of being unmasked,” she said. “Even if one child’s life is saved, it’s worth saving.”