As the Brownsville Independent School District fully reopens for in-person instruction on Tuesday, it will do so with a temporary restraining order in force to require all students and staff to wear masks, BISD legal counsel Kevin O’Hanlon said Sunday.
The BISD Board of Trustees on Thursday joined districts across the Rio Grande Valley and Texas in defying Gov. Greg Abbott’s edict against mask mandates. On Sunday, the Texas Supreme Court stayed the TRO that Dallas and Bexar counties had obtained blocking those counties from enforcing their mask mandates.
“We haven’t had an order yet, so we’ll have to see what happens tomorrow,” O’Hanlon said Sunday about the lawsuit he filed Friday in Travis County under which BISD obtained its TRO.
The decision to require masks for all students, staff and visitors at all district campuses and buildings until further notice put in place a crucial piece of the district’s safe reopening plan, which has been in development over the 18 months since the COVID-19 pandemic started. It came amid the rapid spread of the much more contagious delta variant, an ongoing BISD vaccination campaign and a plea for everyone who is eligible for the vaccine to take the shot.
Anyone 12 or older is eligible to receive the two-shot Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, leaving a large portion of the school population currently ineligible for vaccination. Authorization for younger children to receive the vaccine is expected before the end of the year.
BISD held first-shot vaccination clinics alongside meet-the-teacher events at all elementary schools on Wednesday and at all early college high schools on Thursday. Meet-the-teacher events are scheduled from 3-7 p.m. Monday at all middle schools, where first-shot vaccinations will be available free to anyone eligible. BISD has conducted an aggressive vaccination campaign ever since vaccines first became available in February, and most school personnel are fully vaccinated.
At Thursday’s school board meeting, health officials reported steady demand for the vaccine at the sites. Superintendent Rene Gutierrez took the opportunity to urge everyone who is eligible for the vaccine to get vaccinated, saying “the more shots we get in arms the safer we all will be.”
Since late July BISD principals and administrators, teachers, counselors, librarians, nurses and other staff have been receiving in-service training for what all agree will be a difficult year. Gutierrez’s announcement that “the day we’ve all been waiting for, 18 months in the making” was at hand, received a hearty and lengthy applause.
Earlier in the day, Anysia R. Trevino, deputy superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction, said there had been a great turnout the night before for meet-the-teacher events at the elementary schools.
“This year we’ll be focused on the academic as well as the social-emotional piece, and the only way we can be successful with that is if the students are coming in. I think our parents got a really great feel for how safe our classrooms are,” she said. “That’s another point people need to hear that our classrooms are safe. …We’re prepared to have all the protocols in place. Will it be 100% (turnout) probably not, but we’re doing everything we can to get the students in the classroom and doing everything we can to make sure they’re safe.”
At Faulk Middle School, Principal Benita Villarreal and her team spent the morning Thursday going door-to-door in the Southmost neighborhoods the school serves to invite the students back to school.
“I’m extremely excited to have the kids back. I think it’s going to be a healing moment for the community because the schools are vital in raising the kids,” she said. “We are the village. It’s not only academic well-being, but raising the kids. Here the kids get to meet their peers and expand their background knowledge and build the bond, you know, with other humans. We teach them socialization skills, so I am excited to welcome them, my faculty and staff, we’re extremely excited because we know that we need the human connection. If we can’t literally hug them, we’re going to give lots of air hugs because this is our mission.”
Villarreal said teachers at Faulk are eager to make the human connection and renew human bonds.
“We understand our community has suffered and there’s been human loss and the economy has been hurt, but we really want to be part of that human process where we give the students the opportunity to vent through speaking to us,” she said.
Cynthia Rios, a Texas Education Teacher Allotment Incentive master teacher of eighth-grade reading and language arts expressed the feelings of many when she said she’s excited to be back in the classroom.
“I’m very excited to come back, to finally have a full class of students and to be able to interact,” she said. “We do have a challenging year because we have gaps to close.”
RELATED READING:
Judge pauses Abbott order; BISD, others secure TRO in mask lawsuit
