Local school boards should control reopenings so voters can hold them accountable
Parents and teachers across Texas, looking for some certitude about the coming school year, didn’t exactly get it from Attorney General Ken Paxton’s non-binding guidance issued Tuesday.
Responding specifically to an inquiry from the mayor of Stephenville but also to a flurry of orders by local public health officials (including those in Tarrant County) to close in-person schooling, Paxton declared that the officials had no legal authority “to indiscriminately close schools — public or private.”
“Although a local health authority may possess some authority in limited circumstances to close schools,” he wrote — like in the incidence of a virus outbreak — that power does not allow them to “issue blanket orders closing all schools in their jurisdiction on a purely prophylactic basis.”
His guidance was ill-timed; it’s barely three weeks before school is scheduled to begin, frustrating districts with such blanket closures in place, now left to decide whether and how to hold in-person learning.
But his guidance was also correct.
Because despite the tumult it has caused, Paxton’s letter puts the decision about whether to reopen schools in the hands of the people who should be making this judgment: elected officials. District trustees.
School boards are, after all, the elected body charged with making decisions about public education.
That they were shielded from making such a call by health authorities isn’t just illegal, as Paxton contends, it’s undemocratic.
Because they answer to the voters, more than anyone, district trustees have the incentive to find an arrangement that protects the vulnerable but also satisfies the greatest number of people.
And unlike county health officials, whose focus understandably is on the pandemic, district trustees are obligated to consider the complex and sometimes divergent needs of the communities they represent, taking into account the long and short-term health and societal consequences of school closures and reopenings.
That will mean considering the emotional health of students.
The mental state of overwhelmed parents.
The economic status of families.
The physical well-being of children who depend upon school for services and needs that are not met at home.
The learning loss that kids of all communities will sustain in an environment of virtual learning.
To be sure, this is no enviable task.
Pandemic schooling is new territory for everyone, and protecting teachers, students and staff from the virus is a serious and urgent task.
But preventing further outbreaks cannot be the sole motivation for decisions about schooling.
Some who want schools to stay closed claim that Paxton’s order has left district officials with no choice but to reopen — ready or not — since in the wake of his letter, the Texas Education Agency reversed its earlier guidance that school districts that keep their classrooms closed because of local health mandates would not lose state funding.
Using funding as a threat to force schools to reopen would be as undemocratic as health authorities unilaterally forcing them to close.
But the TEA’s guidance appears to be more forgiving than that.
The agency is still allowing districts discretion on a start date, with 100 percent remote instruction permissible for up to eight weeks. Fort Worth trustees voted Thursday to push back to Sept. 8 and to start with four weeks of online instruction.
The state should be more clear and unequivocal about its continued financial support of districts that lawfully close schools in favor of online schooling for a time. Every district will have different needs and circumstances to consider, and flexibility is essential.
Gov. Greg Abbott should lend his voice to this discussion, too, to dispel any doubt about the state’s financial support for schools.
But it should be the responsibility of district leaders to decide how public schools will operate this year.
Paxton’s guidance confirms this is the case. And it ensures that voters have some recourse.
