Texas teachers want specific reopening guidelines from health care professionals

Texas leaders telling school districts they should open this fall for in-person instruction without following state health care professionals’ advice and metrics for COVID-19 cases worries the Texas Classroom Teachers Association (TCTA).

The guidance for school districts being created by state leaders, including the governor and commissioner of education, lacks a major requirement, the TCTA said on its website. 

They don’t seem to include “the use of data and scientific evidence to determine if and when it is safe for millions of Texas students and school employees to return to schools, and to establish the protocols that must be followed when campuses are opened," according to the TCTA website.

The difference of areas of the state, its districts and the public health metrics in those areas, makes a single statewide reopening order unworkable. Lacking public health expertise, local superintendents and school boards shouldn't be expected to make the decisions, the TCTA said.

An early version of working documents from the Texas Education Association prohibited school districts from reopening in a hybrid or fully remote instruction model no matter the local situation, though this was removed in later versions of the document, TCTA said on its website.

The teachers’ organization wants health care professionals to issue clear guidance with guidelines a district must meet to reopen for in-person classroom instruction. They want the guidelines to follow the number of confirmed coronavirus infected people in the district, the direction of infection rates and how long infection rates need to be below a specified rate before a school can reopen.

“The state should not place limitations on remote instruction that could actually endanger health by requiring districts to provide in-person instruction to all who wish to attend, regardless of the prevalence of the virus in their community or their ability to enforce distancing measures,” the TCTA website states. “Local control has its place, but public health and an ‘acceptable’ death toll are not among them. Let’s use the available data and expertise to make informed policies in the best interests of all."