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In Designated COVID-19 “Hot Spot” Areas
Some Districts Could Get Extra Time
To Return to In-Person Instruction
The TEA issued (Sept. 24) new “Attendance and Enrollment” guidance (see "Back to School Transition" No. 7 here) that allows school boards in districts in certain areas of the state to seek TEA waivers to extend the deadline to transition from online instruction to in-person instruction.
The updated guidance indicates the TEA’s decision on granting a waiver will take into consideration whether the district is in an area of the state designated by the governor (via Executive Order 30 on Sept. 17) for restaurants and other businesses to remain at 50 percent capacity instead of the increased 75 percent capacity contained elsewhere in the governor’s order.
13 Counties
The three large areas of the state — identified broadly as the Rio Grande Valley, Laredo and Victoria areas — include these 13 counties: Calhoun, DeWitt, Goliad, Jackson, Lavaca, Victoria, Jim Hogg, Webb, Zapata, Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr and Willacy.
The TEA’s waiver announcement came after school officials in South Texas, particularly in Brownsville and other Rio Grande Valley areas pushed for the change.
The Texas AFT issued (Sept. 25) a rare statement of praise for Education Commissioner Mike Morath for making the change. (The Texas AFT, on the same day, harshly criticized Morath for a statement he reportedly made that “Teaching without some form of testing is just talking” in justifying the decision to not cancel STAAR testing for this school year.)
Meanwhile, the Association of Texas Professional Educators (ATPE), while praising the TEA for adopting health related data to make informed decisions about school reopenings, said in a statement that the additional time for requiring in-person instruction in these COVID-19 hot spots should not be based on the discretion of the agency to grant a waiver.
Instead, districts in hot spot areas should be able to make their own decisions about reopenings “that make sense for their communities without fear of losing funding,” the ATPE said in a statement.
And, the Texas State Teachers Association — citing the results thus far of its COVID-19 safety survey — called for the TEA to allow online-only options to continue statewide until at least the end of the winter break, and for the TEA to crack down on what the association said has been thousands of reported unsafe COVID-19 safety practices and deviations from recommended sick leave and other employee practices.