Students, staff and visitors visiting any Beaumont ISD campus will have to wear a mask starting today — a response by the district’s elected board to a large spike in positive cases of COVID-19.
The board on Monday morning called an emergency virtual meeting, citing a suspension of open meeting laws ordered by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in March 2020, to discuss the topic.
The meeting followed a discussion last week where the board declined action, but members and administration said Sunday’s news of the closure of Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School due to rising infections demanded they make a final decision. Just a few hours after the meeting, BISD’s website began displaying an alert regarding the change and giving parents instructions if their child has a medical exemption for wearing masks.
“We can’t go along the path we were on,” Board President Robert Dunn said during the meeting. “Delta variant is impacting our faculty and students, and we have to find a better way to protect them.”
The board approved the measure 4-2, with one trustee — Woodrow Reece — absent from the meeting.
Trustees Joe Evans and Kevin Reece voted against the measure after about 30 minutes of discussion between the board members and staff.
District administration and Beaumont Public Health Director Kenneth Coleman were present at the meeting to answer members’ questions vote.
Reece questioned the efficacy of masks and whether creating a mandate for the district would actually create a safer learning environment in schools.
“I just want to make sure we’re talking about something that protects people, and not just politics,” Reece said.
Coleman reviewed CDC recommendations for masks and fielded questions about how and when they are most effective, including whether basic surgical masks would actually help prevent infections.
While there are other medical-grade masks that were made to be more effective, Coleman said, surgical and cloth masks are not only fine to wear for an entire school day, but their efficacy can be increased by wearing two different masks at the same time. Coleman said a mask mandate would help the district keep students and staff in school.
During a brief update about the district’s active cases of COVID-19, Superintendent Shannon Allen said 23% of the faculty at King Middle School were out with COVID-19 infections. Administration spent two days trying unsuccessfully to find substitutes before ultimately closing the campus.
King Middle School is a charter school managed in a partnership with Green Dot Public Schools.
She said it was shocking to see the district in such a situation after just four days of school, but it shows that the Delta variant requires additional mitigation tools if BISD wants to have a successful school year.
“We want to keep our schools open,” Allen said. “Right now, we don’t have an option to flip to virtual.”
Schools that employ mask rules, social distancing and other precautions don’t have to quarantine every student or faculty member that comes in contact with an infected person, Coleman said, referencing CDC guidelines.
“Right now, the only protection you have is wearing a mask and getting a vaccine, which also means that is the only way to keep people in school,” Coleman said. “The only issue with masks being ineffective is when everyone isn’t wearing one.”
Evans’ concerns rested more on the legal implications of the district creating a mandate seemingly against a July executive order from Abbott, though he said he shared concerns with some of his constituency about the science behind COVID-19 precautions.
Sierra Fisher, legal counsel for the district, said that legal footing for a mask mandate was tenacious, even after last week’s Texas Supreme Court ruling over Abbott’s ability to withhold funding from districts that violated his executive order.
A restraining order was issued out of Travis County following the ruling, barring further action, but Fisher said it was set to expire Friday.
“I don’t want people to think that the school board isn’t concerned about what is happening, but I just can’t promote anything that would be illegal,” Evans said, following the explanation from Fisher.
Ultimately, BISD joined Port Arthur ISD one of the only school districts to require masks in school buildings.
By Monday afternoon, BISD’s COVID tracker reported 94 confirmed cases within the district — 50 of which were among teachers.
For some of the parents caring for sick children only a week into the school year, the mask mandate felt like too little, too late.
Sheryl Jackson, a community organizer and district parent, found out late last week that her grandnephew Jamari had contracted COVID-19. He first complained of a sore throat before alter coming down with a 102-degree fever.
“I kept him safe. He wasn’t allowed to go anywhere alone during the pandemic,” Jackson said. “We did the whole virtual learning, and then I let him go back to school. And, now this.”
Jamari, who is a student of the recently-closed MLK Middle School, turned 12 earlier this year and hadn’t yet been vaccinated. The rest of Jackson’s family, including herself, had been vaccinated and is “playing it safe” to protect other household members.
But, after the difficulties of virtual learning last year and signs of hope during the summer, Jackson said she believed sending her children back to school would be the best option.
“The governor decided that people should do whatever they want to do, which means kids didn’t have any options,” Jackson said. “This virus is just really tricky. My child is healthy and he got this sick? I would hate to see what happens for a child with immune issues.”
Jamari is still dealing with a high temperature and the intense fatigue some have experienced with the virus, but he seems on the mend.
Jackson said the district and MLK Middle School deserved credit for their response to Jamari’s case, as Principal Julia Rich reached out to check on him, and district staff were the only way that she could find an available test on short notice.
But another parent dealing with a similar situation is having second thoughts about the district, even after Monday’s decision.
Gayla Young’s youngest daughter — well below the allowed vaccination age — also contracted COVID-19 after the first week of school in Beaumont. She has been dealing with mild symptoms so far, but Young said it was still a difficult conversation to have with her young daughter, and she had to reassure her that everything was going to be okay.
“There were some fears there, and she cried,” Young said. “She knows there have been people that haven’t made it, but that wasn’t going to be her story. We are in a world where something is going on that isn’t going to leave. So, all we can do is pray that we have the ability to make it through.”
After receiving the news on Monday that district schools will now require masks, Young said she was glad trustees made the decision but felt that it was hard to credit them for something that should have already been in place.
So far, none of her other children or family members have tested positive, but Young is still concerned about what happens next, especially considering there aren’t options for virtual learning,
Instead, she said she is considering whether homeschooling might be the best option.
“My kids always brought home A’s and B’s, and did their work But I didn’t really see how they were retaining their lessons until I started seeing them do their classwork at home,” Young said. “They’ve had to learn to become more self-sufficient and they realize it’s their responsibility to really retain the lesson or ask for help if they aren’t getting it.”
BISD was one of the last districts in the region to return to school, which means others already have been counting cases and dealing with their own mask debates for the past few weeks.
Coleman said that other districts in his territory have seen swelling cases, including schools managed by the Diocese of Beaumont, where between 90 and 100 kids have already been sent home to quarantine.
Almost 92% of all ICU beds in Jefferson County were filled by Monday afternoon, almost all of which were occupied by COVID-19 patients, according to data from the Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council.
More than 188 people were hospitalized in the county with COVID-19, and some hospitals like Baptist Hospitals of Southeast Texas reported masses of patients still waiting in the emergency room for available beds.
Seven people reportedly died in the county from the virus on Monday, and 104 new cases were confirmed.
jacob.dick@beaumontenterprise.com
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