Gunny
08-16-2021, 12:03 PM
A Pentagon edict in late July required anyone entering Defense Department buildings in places with “substantial or high” coronavirus spread to wear a mask, regardless of vaccination status.
That included Joint Base San Antonio. And it put the three Texas school districts located on military installations here in an even more uncomfortable position than other school systems, public and private, now being fought over by state and local officials.
The dilemma for most school districts — ordered by the Metropolitan Health District to mask up and by Gov. Greg Abbott not to require masks — is playing out in the courts.
But that won’t change anything for Randolph Field, Fort Sam Houston and Lackland independent school districts, which must follow the Pentagon directive.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office is trying to quash a local judge’s order, welcomed by some school leaders, that led to the health authority’s directive. The state also is trying to stamp out various other rebellions against Abbott’s ban on mask mandates that have broken out in major cities and school districts.
Superintendents of the military school districts — whipsawed by contradictory authorities and conflicting parental preferences like other school leaders — asked Brig. Gen. Caroline Miller, the JBSA commander, for guidance last week.
Miller had already implemented the mask requirement and raised the command’s health protection condition to “Bravo-plus.” After a review, she told the military school districts to stick to the base rules.
“There is no meaningful exception for me to grant at this time,” Miller said, according to JBSA officials. “The health, safety and welfare of our military families remain our top priority.”
Schools at Fort Sam, Lackland and Randolph Field ISDs — small but highly regarded districts, consistently ranking high on the Texas school accountability system — will soon be open and masked.
They are under the authority of the Texas Education Agency, so they’ll be violating Abbott’s order — if his order is upheld by the courts.
On Friday, Paxton’s office was unable to convince the 4th Court of Appeals to invalidate the temporary restraining order that allowed Metro Health to impose mask mandates on all local K-12 schools. The city of San Antonio and Bexar County seek a more permanent ruling Monday in a lawsuit against Abbott.
The lawsuit also challenged parts of the latest TEA guidance that told schools they don’t have to inform parents of positive coronavirus cases or conduct contact tracing. The TEA said parents can still send their children to school even if they are a close contact of a student found to be infected.
Public health experts want contact tracing and quarantining for the same reason they want mask mandates in schools — because classrooms can either worsen or help control the pandemic, whose delta variant is swamping Texas hospitals and sickening children at the highest rates since it started.
“We are torn between beliefs and what’s best for our stakeholders,” said Rolando Ramirez, Southside ISD’s superintendent. “You have this belief that there has to be order and we have to follow whatever directives are given to us. … But we don’t agree with (the state’s) orders. We feel like it’s compromising the safety of our students and our staff.”
Classes start Monday at Southside. Like most school districts in Bexar County, it implemented a mandatory mask policy, made possible by the local lawsuit. Some districts, including Northside ISD, the area’s largest, are waiting to see if Metro Health’s order survives in court.
Southside ISD trustees Thursday authorized Ramirez to write to Abbott asking for local control of pandemic-related safety measures. Ramirez said it was a respectful way to voice their growing concern to the state, but he knows the day-to-day decisions will continue to be defined by outside forces.
“You figured that after a year of this, we would have already become accustomed and (these issues) wouldn’t be much of a problem, but it feels like we are experiencing it for the first time,” he said.
On Wednesday, East Central ISD hosted a virtual town hall meeting to explain to parents the quickly changing start-of-the-year policies. Superintendent Roland Toscano told the nearly 300 viewers that masks will be required — for now — to comply with the local mandate.
In the comment section, where parents were encouraged to send questions, some were quick to respond with “Unmask our children!” pleas, while others asked why they couldn’t keep their children learning remotely.
“I wish we weren’t right in the middle of all this. But these are the circumstances that we find ourselves in,” Toscano told them. “We just ask for grace. We ask for patience and for us to all work together. Where we land on this personally, politically, may be different than how we have to operationalize it.”
This school year, the state is no longer funding virtual learning. Districts can receive funding only for up to 20 days to keep students remote if they test positive or are exposed to COVID-19 and for students who have a temporary health condition.
For smaller districts, or those without a hefty budget reserve, funding virtual learners out of pocket won’t be feasible at any significant scale or for the long term.
At Southside, officials weighed the option of having half of their students — about 2,800 — go virtual for 30 days to monitor the spread of the virus, Ramirez said. But that would cost the district about $15 million in lost state funding.
The governor has repeatedly called on Texans to exercise personal responsibility in fighting the pandemic.
Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University, said Abbott is increasingly focused on Republican primary voters as he prepares for a 2022 re-election battle against other GOP candidates.
“How this plays out for Abbott very much remains to be seen, because the Republican primary electorate is convinced at this point that mandates are unnecessary,” Jillson said. “But the delta variant may well win out by driving up infections and hospitalizations … to levels we have not seen in the better part of a year.”
The military school districts will be at odds with Abbott regardless of the outcome of the legal battles. A July 31 letter the Randolph district sent to parents put the problem simply: “As of today, state, federal and JBSA guidance do not align.”
“I’m between a rock and a hard place, as the saying goes,” said Burnie Roper, a retired Army colonel with 35 years in the service, now in his 13th year as superintendent at Lackland ISD, which enrolled 890 students last spring.
By week’s end, Lackland and Fort Sam ISDs were telling parents they will require masks when classes start Monday. So will Randolph Field ISD, according to the joint base, though it had not posted that decision on its website as of Friday. Randolph Field’s first day of school is Aug. 25.
The districts receive state funding as well as federal “impact aid” for school systems that have no property tax base. They are not part of the Department of Defense Education Activity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Defense_Education_Activity), which oversees 160 schools in seven states, two U.S. territories and 11 foreign countries.
Fort Sam ISD’s superintendent, Gary Bates, a retired Naval Reserve petty officer first class whose district has 1,530 students, said military school district leaders met with Miller, the JBSA commander, to “make sure collectively we’re on the same page.”
“Data has shown that by wearing masks it has slowed down the transmission of COVID, so that’s why we’re doing this here at Fort Sam,” he said. “It’s not about politics 101.”
https://www.expressnews.com/news/local/article/San-Antonio-s-military-school-districts-16387160.php
Little glimpse into the World I grew up in, minus one difference: For some reason, these on-base schools aren't DoD schools anymore. When they were, we followed DoD rules and didn't give a rat's ass what the State of wherever said.
Military life is far, FAR less complicated than the clusterf*ck civilians have to turn everything into.
That included Joint Base San Antonio. And it put the three Texas school districts located on military installations here in an even more uncomfortable position than other school systems, public and private, now being fought over by state and local officials.
The dilemma for most school districts — ordered by the Metropolitan Health District to mask up and by Gov. Greg Abbott not to require masks — is playing out in the courts.
But that won’t change anything for Randolph Field, Fort Sam Houston and Lackland independent school districts, which must follow the Pentagon directive.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office is trying to quash a local judge’s order, welcomed by some school leaders, that led to the health authority’s directive. The state also is trying to stamp out various other rebellions against Abbott’s ban on mask mandates that have broken out in major cities and school districts.
Superintendents of the military school districts — whipsawed by contradictory authorities and conflicting parental preferences like other school leaders — asked Brig. Gen. Caroline Miller, the JBSA commander, for guidance last week.
Miller had already implemented the mask requirement and raised the command’s health protection condition to “Bravo-plus.” After a review, she told the military school districts to stick to the base rules.
“There is no meaningful exception for me to grant at this time,” Miller said, according to JBSA officials. “The health, safety and welfare of our military families remain our top priority.”
Schools at Fort Sam, Lackland and Randolph Field ISDs — small but highly regarded districts, consistently ranking high on the Texas school accountability system — will soon be open and masked.
They are under the authority of the Texas Education Agency, so they’ll be violating Abbott’s order — if his order is upheld by the courts.
On Friday, Paxton’s office was unable to convince the 4th Court of Appeals to invalidate the temporary restraining order that allowed Metro Health to impose mask mandates on all local K-12 schools. The city of San Antonio and Bexar County seek a more permanent ruling Monday in a lawsuit against Abbott.
The lawsuit also challenged parts of the latest TEA guidance that told schools they don’t have to inform parents of positive coronavirus cases or conduct contact tracing. The TEA said parents can still send their children to school even if they are a close contact of a student found to be infected.
Public health experts want contact tracing and quarantining for the same reason they want mask mandates in schools — because classrooms can either worsen or help control the pandemic, whose delta variant is swamping Texas hospitals and sickening children at the highest rates since it started.
“We are torn between beliefs and what’s best for our stakeholders,” said Rolando Ramirez, Southside ISD’s superintendent. “You have this belief that there has to be order and we have to follow whatever directives are given to us. … But we don’t agree with (the state’s) orders. We feel like it’s compromising the safety of our students and our staff.”
Classes start Monday at Southside. Like most school districts in Bexar County, it implemented a mandatory mask policy, made possible by the local lawsuit. Some districts, including Northside ISD, the area’s largest, are waiting to see if Metro Health’s order survives in court.
Southside ISD trustees Thursday authorized Ramirez to write to Abbott asking for local control of pandemic-related safety measures. Ramirez said it was a respectful way to voice their growing concern to the state, but he knows the day-to-day decisions will continue to be defined by outside forces.
“You figured that after a year of this, we would have already become accustomed and (these issues) wouldn’t be much of a problem, but it feels like we are experiencing it for the first time,” he said.
On Wednesday, East Central ISD hosted a virtual town hall meeting to explain to parents the quickly changing start-of-the-year policies. Superintendent Roland Toscano told the nearly 300 viewers that masks will be required — for now — to comply with the local mandate.
In the comment section, where parents were encouraged to send questions, some were quick to respond with “Unmask our children!” pleas, while others asked why they couldn’t keep their children learning remotely.
“I wish we weren’t right in the middle of all this. But these are the circumstances that we find ourselves in,” Toscano told them. “We just ask for grace. We ask for patience and for us to all work together. Where we land on this personally, politically, may be different than how we have to operationalize it.”
This school year, the state is no longer funding virtual learning. Districts can receive funding only for up to 20 days to keep students remote if they test positive or are exposed to COVID-19 and for students who have a temporary health condition.
For smaller districts, or those without a hefty budget reserve, funding virtual learners out of pocket won’t be feasible at any significant scale or for the long term.
At Southside, officials weighed the option of having half of their students — about 2,800 — go virtual for 30 days to monitor the spread of the virus, Ramirez said. But that would cost the district about $15 million in lost state funding.
The governor has repeatedly called on Texans to exercise personal responsibility in fighting the pandemic.
Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University, said Abbott is increasingly focused on Republican primary voters as he prepares for a 2022 re-election battle against other GOP candidates.
“How this plays out for Abbott very much remains to be seen, because the Republican primary electorate is convinced at this point that mandates are unnecessary,” Jillson said. “But the delta variant may well win out by driving up infections and hospitalizations … to levels we have not seen in the better part of a year.”
The military school districts will be at odds with Abbott regardless of the outcome of the legal battles. A July 31 letter the Randolph district sent to parents put the problem simply: “As of today, state, federal and JBSA guidance do not align.”
“I’m between a rock and a hard place, as the saying goes,” said Burnie Roper, a retired Army colonel with 35 years in the service, now in his 13th year as superintendent at Lackland ISD, which enrolled 890 students last spring.
By week’s end, Lackland and Fort Sam ISDs were telling parents they will require masks when classes start Monday. So will Randolph Field ISD, according to the joint base, though it had not posted that decision on its website as of Friday. Randolph Field’s first day of school is Aug. 25.
The districts receive state funding as well as federal “impact aid” for school systems that have no property tax base. They are not part of the Department of Defense Education Activity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Defense_Education_Activity), which oversees 160 schools in seven states, two U.S. territories and 11 foreign countries.
Fort Sam ISD’s superintendent, Gary Bates, a retired Naval Reserve petty officer first class whose district has 1,530 students, said military school district leaders met with Miller, the JBSA commander, to “make sure collectively we’re on the same page.”
“Data has shown that by wearing masks it has slowed down the transmission of COVID, so that’s why we’re doing this here at Fort Sam,” he said. “It’s not about politics 101.”
https://www.expressnews.com/news/local/article/San-Antonio-s-military-school-districts-16387160.php
Little glimpse into the World I grew up in, minus one difference: For some reason, these on-base schools aren't DoD schools anymore. When they were, we followed DoD rules and didn't give a rat's ass what the State of wherever said.
Military life is far, FAR less complicated than the clusterf*ck civilians have to turn everything into.