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Fort Worth is joining other Texas school districts in a lawsuit challenging the ban on masks mandates in schools.
Tuesday night, trustees voted 6-2 to join the lawsuit fighting Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order. One board member abstained.
The vote came after hours of divided comments by parents and community members who piled into a standing room only for the special meeting.
Trustee Quinton Phillips said a mask mandate is not only protects students but educators as well, noting that school staff are also husbands, wives, sons and daughters. The board should be doing whatever is possible to protect those who attend and work at the school, he said.
“It’s not about infringing on someone’s rights,” he said. “It’s about implementing what’s best for everyone.”
Trustee Carin Evans had a different outlook on joining the lawsuit that was filed by the La Joya school district in the Rio Grande Valley area. She said its outcome will effect the district no matter if they’re plaintiffs or interveners.
She would rather focus on offering a virtual learning for students and asked administration to create a plan for that option as they await a ruling on the lawsuit from the Texas Supreme Court.
“I want to steward our resources to focus on what’s happening in Tarrant County,” she said.
Several area districts are revamping COVID-19 protocols as cases surge with the more contagious delta variant. Some are revisiting mask requirements despite Abbott’s ban.
Districts have flip-flopped on requiring face coverings as entities fight Abbot’s ban on them in court. Late Tuesday, Disability Rights Texas filed the first federal lawsuit against Abbott’s ban, alleging that his executive order puts students with disabilities at risk.
FWISD Superintendent Kent Scribner announced a mask mandate last week, but then a handful of parents filed a lawsuit to temporarily stop it.
At Tuesday’s meeting, speakers called for the Fort Worth board to go against the governor’s order and proceed with such a mandate while others said that parents should make the final decision on masks.
Last year was hard enough on Diana Brandenberg’s 11-year-old who has Down syndrome and had open heart surgery in the past. She wants nothing more for her son to be able to attend kindergarten safely and a mask mandate would help, Brandenburg told trustees.
“He’s been in the PICU [pediatric intensive care unit] at Cooks [Children’s Medical Center], more times than any of you will ever imagine,” she said.
Parent Priscilla Brown pleaded with the board to join Dallas ISD and reinstate a mask mandate, saying that if her child has to legally go to school and be exposed to the virus, then the district should do all that it can to keep them safe.
“We are in a public health pandemic, not a parental choice pandemic,” she said
But Carol Gweneri, who has grandkids in the district, said masks wearing should be for those who chose to, not for the majority. There’s no conclusive evidence that masks work, she said.
“I urge all of you at this table, please use your common sense,” she said.
Fort Worth ISD teachers also weighed in on masks.
Meredith Bowman, a teacher at Tanglewood Elementary, questioned the sanitary of masks worn by students all day. But they also take an emotional toll on students as well, she said. Children need to be able to express themselves, and masks hinder emotions, she said.
““It should be a choice. It’s not the only option that we have,” Bowman said.
Ernie Moran, a Western Hills High School teacher, said scholarly research is accepted when it comes to academics and athletics, so why can’t the same be applied to science.
He asked trustees if they would still follow the governor’s orders if Abbott established a 15-hour school day or said football helmets were no longer necessary to play the game.
“Please vote to mandate masks and offer a virtual option for schools immediately until it’s no longer necessary by experts, rather than politicians,” he stressed.
Concerned families and groups are flooding meetings that often become tense with name calling, sneers and cheers.
Some if it even spilling out of the board room. FWISD board president Tobi Jackson noted that pro-mask protestors left signs and stuffed animals at her home, interrupting a conference call about the district’s legal options regarding a mask mandate.
Monday night, Highland Park ISD officials reiterated plans to make masks optional after briefly requiring them last week under a Dallas County order. Classes for the district begin on Wednesday.
Sunday night, a Texas Supreme Court decision seemingly halted Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins’ county-wide mask mandate and Highland Park, like most other area districts, reversed course. But another court ruling appears to give public schools across the state more leeway in setting their own mask requirements, at least for now.
Speakers flooded the HPISD board meeting for hours with one group pleading trustees to reconsider implementing a face covering requirement as an opposing set of community members begged the board to stand strong against any such mandate. Parents heckled pro-mask students and booed doctors who issued grave warnings about the highly contagious delta variant.
“As a student, how can I be expected to learn when I am constantly worrying if the people around me are quite literally threatening my life?” Adam Leybovich-Glikin, a junior, said at the Highland Park meeting. “More broadly, how can a student receive an education when their safety is put at risk, especially when their safety can be so easily assured by wearing a mask?”
Dr. Zachary Dreyfuss, a pulmonary and critical care physician with an HPISD kindergartener told trustees of the dwindling supply of ICU beds in nearby hospitals. He and a group of more than 120 district parents in the medical field sent a letter to trustees asking HPISD to require masks in line with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics, which both recommend universal masking regardless of vaccination status.
A chorus of anti-mask parents at the back of the board room booed or jeered the doctors who spoke. And after a high school student spoke about his concerns of returning to school without required masking, some parents yelled “homeschool” while another shouted “good job sheep!”
“I saw my doctor here tonight, and he’s fired,” one woman, who declined to give her name, yelled to cheers in the crowd.
Several parents commented that they had seen very little masking at meet-the-teacher events that took place prior to the board meeting. This shows that the HPISD community has moved on from masks, parent Eric Swanson said.
“If and when our local tyrant Clay Jenkins tries again to institute an illegal mask mandate … hundreds upon hundreds if not thousands of children will show up to this district’s schools without masks, with a copy of [the governor’s order] in their pocket,” Swanson said. “What are you going to do?”
So far, in Dallas County, Richardson and Dallas ISDs have announced they will require masks.
Meanwhile, amid a confusing patchwork of mask policies, back and forth over health protocols and general uneasiness about starting the school year during a pandemic, families are clamoring for alternatives to in-person instruction.
Parents in Manor ISD, east of Austin, for example, filled all 350 available spots for their district’s virtual learning option within 19 minutes of the application process opening last week, according to reports.
But for the vast majority of children who will attend school in person, families are concerned that COVID-19 cases are on the rise and children younger than 12 remain ineligible for a vaccine.