Area Schools Grapple with Reopening Amidst COVID’s Ever-Changing Mandates

Governor Greg Abbott announced Tuesday in a television interview that public schools in Texas will have some extra time to transition to in-person classes this fall. Under guidelines released by the Texas Education Agency last week, schools were told that they would need to limit online-only instruction to the first three weeks of the school year or risk losing state funding.

It was the latest example of rapidly-changing rules from the State in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Last week, La Grange ISD Superintendent Bill Wagner told the Record that his district plans to begin in-person classes when school officially starts on Aug. 13. This week, the Record spoke with the superintendents at Round Top-Carmine, Schulenburg and Fayetteville ISDs about their plans for classes in the fall.

Round Top-Carmine ISD Superintendent Brandon Schovajsa said his district has not conducted a survey of students to see how many plan to attend classes in-person in the fall. He estimated that about 20 percent of students will choose to begin school at home in the fall.

“If they do want to go online, we’re going to require parents to come in and we’ll give them the supplies they need and walk through how it will work,” Schovajsa said. “What happened this past school year, of just sending work home, everyone was paddling as hard as they could to stay afloat, but the bottom line is we’re going to have to do more.”

He said online school will be much more rigorous than the system last spring when students were sent home in March.

“We’re going to attach it to a Google Classroom format to where kids are checking in every single day,” he said.

Schovajsa said RT-C ISD could face a severe funding shortage if at-home students fail to check in daily. State school funding is tied to daily classroom attendance. Schovajsa said TEA will require daily attendance records from online students. The State considers RT-C a wealthy school district and took about $875,000 from the district last year through the “recapture” program whereby local funds from wealthy school districts are redistributed to poorer school districts. If just 10 online students fail to check in daily, Schovajsa said the State would recapture $950,000 from RT-C.

“If that student doesn’t check in, our funding goes down and recapture goes up,” Schovajsa said. “It’s a scary thing.”

All students will have access to a Chromebook, he said. Schovajsa said the district is formulating an official plan for reopening school with protocols keeping everyone safe. He hoped to release that plan on July 21.

Schovasja expressed some concern that the rule requiring all students over 10 years of age to wear a face mask might interfere with the learning environment. He encouraged parents of younger students to acclimate their children to wearing a mask before school starts.

Schulenburg ISD Superintendent Duane Limbaugh said a recent survey indicated that around 30 percent of students at SISD plan to begin the school year at home instead of in class. He said the school recently purchased 40 internet hot spots for families who want to begin the school year at home but do not have an internet connection at home. He said the school district has enough Chromebook computers to supply to those students who do not have a computer at home.

He said the district is looking at several learning management systems which will allow teachers to post instructional material. Students will be able to log on and do their work online.

“TEA has some resources available,” Limbaugh said. “We havent decided which one we are going to use yet. We’re waiting to see some more specifics.

Current guidance from the TEA requires all students over 10 years old who attend class in-person to wear face masks throughout the day. Limbaugh said he expects teachers might have a difficult time keeping younger students masked. He recalled an experience at a school where he previously worked involving a new rule requiring students to tuck in their shirts.

“It was a constant battle,” Limbaugh said. “I have a feeling the mask battle will be similar.”

Limbaugh expressed some frustration with constantly changing guidelines from state education officials.

“One week TEA says one thing, then two weeks later they say something else,” Limbaugh said. “In trying to plan for four weeks out from now, we’re putting plans together and just hope the whole thing doesn’t fall apart at the end.”

Dr. Jeff Harvey, superintendent of Fayetteville ISD, said his district surveyed parents about their plans for the fall, and about 75 percent responded. Of those, 82 percent said they plan to send their kids to school in the fall. The remaining 18 percent want their children to begin the school year online at home.

“The big thing is, we are contacting those who chose online school, and we’re explaining to them that there will be a big difference between online learning as it took place in the spring and what it’s going to look like moving forward,” Harvey said. “It’s not going to be packet pickup and things of that nature. There will be daily requirements to be logged into your classes.”

Online classes for high school students will take place synchronously with on-campus classes. Harvey said those students are expected to be logged in at 7:55 a.m. when classroom instruction begins.

Harvey said Fayetteville ISD is working to formulate an official plan for how in-person and online classes will work in the fall. Harvey said the district will wait to publish that information due to the quickly-changing situation.

“To be honest, it’s quite early to be putting anything out,” he said. “Any kind of guidance we put out right now, I’m afraid, will change before we even get to the start of school.”