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Texas House Democrats ask Gov. Abbott to allow schools to offer virtual learning, mandate masks

Austin ISD will strongly encourage masking indoors when the school year starts on Aug. 17. (Bob Daemmrich)
With new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations spiking upwards in Austin and across the state, 31 Texas House Democrats are asking Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas Education Agency to allow public school districts to offer virtual learning options and mandate masking during the upcoming school year.
"Only weeks ago it may have seemed that we Texans were putting the COVID pandemic behind us," State Rep. Vikki Goodwin, D-Austin, wrote in a letter to Abbott and Mike Morath, education commissioner, on Friday. "But the Delta variant has shown us that this, sadly, not the case."
Parents are anxious about Delta variant. They want schools to take precautions - mask mandates & virtual learning options. These options aren't available due to Gov. Abbott's orders. I sent this letter asking for reconsideration. It was signed by 31 of my colleagues. #txlegepic.twitter.com/vNdFfXYzeZ
— Rep. Vikki Goodwin (@VikkiGoodwinTX) July 24, 2021
As a result of the more contagious Delta variant, COVID cases and hospitalizations are rising rapidly—and overwhelmingly affecting unvaccinated individuals. The number of weekly new cases statewide has increased over fivefold in the last month, according to the Department of State Health Services.
This is of particular concern to school officials and families with school-age children, as most school districts are set to resume in-person learning in less than a month and children under 12 remain ineligible for any COVID vaccine.
"The academic year will be starting soon, and we have heard from school officials and parents in our districts that the path we are on is not acceptable to them," Goodwin wrote. "To meet this challenge, schools must be given options that they currently do not have."
Abbott told a Houston TV news station on Tuesday that he would not impose another mask mandate, saying it would be "inappropriate to require people who already have immunity to wear a mask."
Texas parents, start calling your governor to ask him to lift his ban on mask mandates in schools. There's no reason to put our youth who aren't eligible for COVID vaccines at risk. Child and Adolescent Health folks- prepare yourselves for a rough start to the fall.
— Nicolasa Treviño (@ATX7101) July 21, 2021
Just got a robo call from @AusPublicHealth saying that we're in Stage 4 of COVID risk and that partially or un-vaxxed people should stay home.
— julie hollek 한여울 (@jkru) July 23, 2021
Everyone under 12 is in that category and there is no concrete plan from AISD to address this and school starts in less than a month. pic.twitter.com/TkAotOErhQ
Goodwin and her co-signers—including State Reps. Eddie Rodriguez, Donna Howard, Celia Israel, Gina Hinojosa and Sheryl Cole of Austin—asked Abbott and Morath to allow schools to implement virtual learning options for students who are at-risk or unvaccinated. State lawmakers failed to pass legislation during the regular session that would have funded such options.
"Families are concerned about matters of life and death: if they feel that pulling their child out of school is the only way to survive, then they will do that," she wrote.
Goodwin also asked state leaders to allow school districts to mandate masking on campus. Abbott issued an executive order in May that prohibits public schools from issuing such mandates.
Austin ISD will "strongly encourage everyone, whether vaccinated or not, to wear a mask when indoors and around others who are not in their immediate household," according to its COVID protocols for the upcoming school year. Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde also told the Austin American-Statesman editorial board this week that the district is considering offering limited virtual learning.
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Popular
As summer temperatures continue to increase, so does Austin's "Party Island"—a hundreds-strong army of kayakers and paddle boarders who gather each weekend in the middle of Lady Bird Lake.
Born from the pandemic, the swarm of paddleboarding partiers has continued to grow each summer and can be seen from the nearby Lamar Boulevard Bridge. And while "Party Island" certainly lives up to one half of its name, it's not actually an island at all: instead, it's located at a shallow sandbar near Lou Neff Point.
With beers, burgers from portable grills and even DJ turntables in hand, more friends and strangers continue to beat the heat in new ways at the distinct Austin hangout.
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- Photo story: Austin's 'Party Island' on Lady Bird Lake - austonia ›
(Pexels)
If you are a committed, grunge-wearing resident of the Pacific Northwest, it is easy–almost automatic–to look at Texas as an extraordinarily dry, hot and culturally oppressive place that is better to avoid, especially in the summer. Our two granddaughters live with their parents in Portland.
Recently we decided to take the older girl, who is 15, to Dallas. Setting aside the summer heat, a Portlander can adjust to the vibes of Austin without effort. So let’s take Texas with all of its excesses straight up. Dallas, here we come.
Our 15-year-old granddaughter and her sister, 12, have spent summer weeks with us, usually separately so that we could better get to know each individually. In visits focused on Austin and Port Aransas, the girls seemed to be developing an affection for Texas.
Houston and Dallas are two great American cities, the 4th and 9th largest, each loaded with cultural treasures, each standing in glittering and starchy contrast to Austin’s more louche, T-shirts and shorts ways.
Three hours up I-35, Dallas loomed before us as a set of gray skyscrapers in a filmy haze, accessed only through a concrete mixmaster of freeways, ramps and exits. I drove with false confidence. Be calm, I said to myself, it will all end in 10 minutes under the hotel entrance canopy. And it did.
The pool at the Crescent Court Hotel in Dallas. (Crescent Court Hotel)
We stayed three nights at the Crescent Court Hotel ($622 a night for two queens), a high-end hotel in Uptown, patronized by women in white blazers, business people in suits, and tall, lean professional athletes, their shiny Escalades and Corvettes darting in and out, and other celebrities like Bill Barr, the former attorney general who shoe-horned his ample self into a Toyota.
Each morning as I walked to Whole Foods for a cappuccino, a fellow identified by a bellman as Billy the Oilman arrived in his Rolls Royce Phantom. Where does he park? “Wherever he wants to. He likes the Starbucks here.”
We garaged our more modest set of wheels for the visit. We were chauffeured for tips by Matt Cooney and Alfonza “The Rev” Scott in the hotel’s black Audi sedan. They drove us to museums, restaurants and past the enclaves of the rich and famous. In Highland Park, The Rev pointed out the homes of the Dallas Cowboys' Jerry Jones and Troy Aikman along with the family compound of the Hunts, oil and gas tycoons.
The Dallas Museum of Art’s “Cartier and Islam” exhibit (until Sept. 18) attracted an older crowd; the nearby Perot Museum of Nature and Science was a powerful whirlpool of kids’ groups ricocheting from the Tyrannosaurus Rex to the oil fracking exhibit. Watch your shins.
A Geogia O'Keeffe oil painting called "Ranchos Church, New Mexico" at the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art. (Rich Oppel)
For us, the best museum was the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth, a 50-minute, madcap drive away via a 75 mph toll lane along I-30. Don’t try it during rush hour. The Carter has an exquisite collection of Remington paintings and sculptures and an excellent array of 19th and 20th-century paintings as well. Pick one museum? The Amon Carter. Peaceful, beautiful, uncrowded, free admission and small enough to manage in two hours.
The Fort Worth Stockyards, a place of history (with a dab of schmaltz), fun and good shopping, filled one of our mornings. The 98 acres brand the city as Cowboy Town, with a rodeo and a twice-daily (11:30 a.m. and 4 p.m.) cattle drive. We shopped for boots, drank coffee and watched the “herd” of 18 longhorns. So languid was their progress that if this were a real market drive the beef would have been very tough and leathery before it hit the steakhouse dinner plate.
The cattle drive at the Fort Worth Stockyards. (Rich Oppel)
But we could identify: the temperature was 97. “I saw a dog chasing a cat today,” said the emcee, deploying a very old joke. “It was so hot that both were walking.”
With limited time, we chose three very different restaurants:
- Nobu, in the Crescent Court Hotel; Jia, a modern Chinese restaurant in Highland Park; and Joe T. Garcia’s in Fort Worth. Nobu’s exotic Japanese menu set us back $480, with tip, for four (we had a guest), but it was worth it.
- Jia was an ordinary suburban strip mall restaurant, but with good food and a reasonable tab of $110 for four.
- Joe T.’s is an 85-year-old Fort Worth institution (think Matt’s El Rancho but larger), a fine Mexican restaurant where a meal with two drinks was $115.
Sushi at high-end restaurant Nobu. (Crescent Hotel)
It was all a splurge for a grandchild’s visit. Now we will get back to our ordinary road trips of Hampton Inns, where a room rate is closer to the Crescent Court’s overnight parking rate of $52. And to corner cafes in small towns.
Did Dallas change our 15-year-old’s view of Texas? “Yes. I think it’s a lot cooler than I did. The fashion, the food.” So, not only Austin is cool. Take Texas as a whole. It’s a big, complex, diverse and wonderful state.