For In-Person Instruction
Texas Schools Close Until 2020-21

The big (but not really unexpected) news during TEN’s current reporting period was the governor ordering (on April 17) all Texas public and private schools and colleges/universities to remain physically closed for the rest of this school year, a change from the governor’s prior order that schools could not reopen until May 4.

Distance instruction, something that schools for the most part had been engaged in after their unexpectedly extended spring breaks ended, will continue. The governor’s order allows teachers to go into the classrooms for video instruction, to perform administrative duties, and to clean out their classrooms.

The UIL quickly followed suit with the announcement that all league-associated activities — competitions, contests, rehearsals, practices, etc. — are cancelled for the rest of the school year.

“Disaster” Accountability Label
In the days leading up to the governor’s latest school-closure order, the TEA had announced that all campuses and districts will not receive accountability ratings this school year, but will instead receive a label of Not Rated: Declared State of Disaster.

In some of the other COVID-19 related news:

• Money — U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced (April 14, here and here) that Texas will receive $307 million of the $3 billion in the first of the federal U.S. Department of Education (USDE) COVID-19 related funding to be disbursed. The grants will be distributed to the nation’s governors to use as they see fit to meet the needs of students, public and private schools, colleges and other education-related entities due to COVID-19.

  Each state must still formally apply for the grants using a streamlined application.

  This Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) funding is a portion of the $2 trillion appropriated by Congress, and signed into law (March 27) by the president, to be used for various education and non-education COVID-19 relief and stimulus efforts, and reportedly included $13.5 billion for K-12 education in addition to the $3 billion to fund the GEER grants.

  The TEA has also posted info about how districts can apply for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grants and other state and federal funding opportunities.

  Among the COVID-19 funding announcements by the TEA included an Instructional Continuity Grant program (deadline May 22) that will award from $10,000 to $220,000 to ISDs and charters that meet specified at-risk student criteria.

  The grants are intended to support the work of “instructional continuity during campus closures due to COVID-19,” and recipients can use the funds to pay for expenses incurred retroactively from March 13.

• Recession declared — With oil plummeting to below $0 a barrel (as of press time), state Comptroller Glenn Hegar was officially labeling the state’s economic woes — caused by the employment and business downturn and the plunge in oil prices and resulting drop in sales tax collections — a recession. Hegar said how bad a shape the Texas economy is won’t be known until hard fiscal data is available by mid-summer, Hegar told the Texas Tribune.

• School finance — House Education Committee Chair Dan Huberty, R-Humble, told the Houston Chronicle (April 20) that he is telling school officials that it would “be prudent for them to squirrel away some money, even if it is too early to tell how much of an impact the pandemic will have on funding next year.”

• Meanwhile, State Attorney General Ken Paxton issued opinion (KP-0299) that says the governor’s declaration of all Texas counties to be disaster areas won’t trigger a provision in the Tax Code that creates a temporary tax exemption for “qualified property” (as defined in state law).

  The provision is triggered only when property located in a governor-declared disaster area is physically damaged, a criteria that doesn’t apply in the current COVID-19 disaster, the AG ruled.

• Elections — Although scores of ISDs followed an April 2 “take action now” demand (by the Texas Secretary of State’s office (in this mass email) to move their May 2 elections to the November general election, not all did. Barbers Hill ISD (near Houston) for instance, as of press time, had just begun early voting for its May 2 school board/school bond election being jointly held with a Mont Belvieu municipal election.

  Mont Belvieu’s website listed a number of health and safety protections that will be in place for voters at the consolidated voting location at the city’s conference center, and voters were advised that “mail voting is available for all who are qualified to do so.”

  The state attorney general was threatening to appeal a state judge’s ruling that any Texas voter can vote by mail in the July 14 major party primary races if they don’t want to go to the polls in person due to fears they will contract the disease, and the judge has signaled that he might extend his ruling to include all elections this year.

  Texas law makes no exceptions for the limited reasons Texans can vote by mail, reasons Attorney General Paxton said do not include COVID-19 fears.

• Charter letter — A group of 18 Texas school management, teacher and other stakeholder groups sent a letter this month to the education commissioner asking him to consider halting or significantly limiting his approval of charter school expansions in light of the current recession.

  The letter asks that any available funding be used to support further implementation of 2019’s HB3 for ISDs and currently approved charters.