Texas High School Students Want More COVID Protections

Jan. 31, 2022

As the Omicron variant surges throughout Texas, college students at public excessive faculties are turning to petition drives and walkouts in an effort to get faculty districts to require extra COVID-19 protocols, The Texas Tribune stories.

The college students are asking for a return to face masks guidelines or an enlargement of digital studying. In some circumstances they need faculty districts to quickly shut down throughout the surge.

“We could be doing more, and we’re choosing not to [in order] to stay open, at any cost, and by any means necessary,” Tiernee Pitts, a protest chief and senior at Cedar Ridge High School within the Round Rock Independent School District, advised The Texas Tribune. “It just feels like we’re just being open while everything around us is falling down.”

Since faculty restarted after the winter holidays there have been 192,145 pupil COVID-19 circumstances and 61,142 workers circumstances, The Tribune stated, citing the Texas Education Agency. That seems to be the best case degree for the reason that begin of the pandemic.

In the Fort Bend faculty district, greater than 200 college students have signed a petition asking faculties to be shut down throughout the surge. One of these college students, Jada Clerk, a freshman at William B. Travis High School, stated she has bronchial asthma and that strolling down hallways amongst unmasked classmates is anxious.

“Sometimes I don’t even want to breathe,” Clerk advised The Tribune. “You can really feel people’s breath on you. That’s how close we were [in the hallway].”

A pupil within the Garland faculty district, eleventh grader Fernando Alaniz, says Omicron is so prevalent that three of his lecturers are out sick. Half of his eight lecturers and most college students don’t put on masks, he advised The Tribune.

About 700 folks have signed a petition asking Garland faculty officers to make modifications, corresponding to bringing again distant studying for college students who check constructive, reviving the masks rule, giving PCR assessments, and offering masks at college.

“It is a shame that our school district is not caring about the health of the students and staff, even though we are going through a pandemic that has taken the lives of so many people in Texas,” the petition says.

Students on the Round Rock faculty district, north of Austin, walked out in an effort to get the administration to impose extra security guidelines. More than 1,800 signed an internet petition.

The Tribune stated district officers met with pupil protest organizers and agreed to some calls for, corresponding to offering extra testing websites and high-quality masks. 

Jenny LaCoste-Caputo, the Round Rock faculty district chief of public affairs and communications, advised The Tribune that workers shortages make among the calls for tough to satisfy. For occasion, she stated the district couldn’t discover sufficient folks to conduct contact tracing.  The district had a program earlier when there have been sufficient folks.

The Tribune stated the Texas lawyer common is suing the Round Rock ISD for requiring masks in faculties – a rule that violates Gov. Greg Abbott’s ban on masks mandates. But Pitts, the scholar, stated the masks mandate is unenforced and plenty of college students don’t put on them.