Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is allowing school districts to hold in-person summer school starting June 1, but only a few superintendents and systems have so far detailed their plans to reopen classrooms to students and teachers.
The Texas Education Education Agency has released guidelines for safely reopening school buildings for summer school, including placing desks six feet apart, checking students’ temperatures daily and having students gather outside whenever possible.
San Antonio’s largest systems, Northside and North East independent school districts plan to open some classrooms in July, the San Antonio News-Express reported.
Northside ISD leaders hope to first bring special education students, English language learners and early childhood programs back to classrooms, Superintendent Brian Woods told the News-Express.
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San Antonio ISD may open high schools in June to prepare small groups of students for career and technical certification exams, according to the newspaper’s website.
Many districts continue online learning
Many other districts, such as Pasadena ISD near Houston, have already announced they will continue with online learning.
The state’s safety guidelines make classroom instruction difficult, Rebecca Benner, the district’s executive director of curriculum and instruction, told the Houston Chronicle.
“The max we can have in each class is 11 kids,” Brenner said on the newspaper’s website. “That would be complicated; so we’re keeping it virtual.”
The district will provide some face-to-face instruction for students in special education, according to the Chronicle, which reported that other districts in the region, such as Alvin and Pearland ISDs, will also remain online.
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The Texas State Teachers Association says June 1 is too early to reopen classrooms because districts will not have time to put sufficient safety precautions in place, The Dallas Morning News reported.
“By rushing to allow school buildings to reopen on June 1, less than six weeks from now, Gov. Abbott is creating an illusion that the worst of this health crisis is behind us. It is not,” the association’s president, Noel Candelaria, said in a news release quoted by the Morning News. “People are still getting sick and dying in large numbers, and reopening school buildings too soon will increase the peril.”
The state of Minnesota has also released guidelines for holding in-person summer school, District Administration reported earlier this month.
DA’s coronavirus page offers complete coverage of the impacts on K-12.
