August 27, 2021
By: Jet Harris
Category: 2024 Election, Abbott, Coronavirus, Sumbitches
A concerned parent from Bethany Elementary School in Plano ISD in Plano, Texas forwarded me the PTA newsletter that went out to parents today, as the school grapples with numerous outbreaks of COVID-19. Anna Hulse, the PTA President at Bethany Elementary gathered the following information that proves the impossible circumstances faced by parents, like me, who feel we have no safe education options for our children in Texas public schools.
Chris Hill, the Collin County Judge, is full-on trolling the parents in Collin County with Facebook posts asking parents “WTF is wrong with you?” and “Freedom is more important than education,” when parents challenge him and his interpretation of the law. Well, that freedom has consequences. As of today, 14,000 public school students have tested positive in the state. 15% of all Texans with COVID last week were public school students and staff.
Willam Joy is a reporter for DFW News station WFAA Channel 8
The following Newsletter outlines exactly how few options Texas parents have:
Dear PTA Families –
As you are aware, COVID positive cases are climbing at Bethany Elementary. While the PISD Dashboard (link) is frozen at 13 student and 3 staff as of Sunday, our positive case count is at a minimum of 22 known positives, including both students and staff. Bethany Elementary’s 2019-20 TEA official population was 338. Some easy math tells you that 6% of our student population is COVID positive at 11 days into the school year. Several of these cases are concentrated in specific classes.
Page 18 of the PISD Return to School Plan 2021-2022 (link) has levels stating the following:
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I messaged with Mr. Bird, Collin County Judge Chris Hill and the Elementary Executive Team for PISD about this. In addition, I invited PISD’s Director for District Health Services, Staci Antelo, to our PTA Board meeting Thursday morning to further discuss what options Bethany Elementary, PISD, and CCHSC have to control the positive case count at Bethany. Staci Antelo, BSN, RN, NCSN, was very gracious to give us almost an hour of her day to answer our questions and discuss our concerns. I am grateful to her for taking this time to speak with the Executive Board.
Here is a summary of the issues:
- TEA has mandated that ISDs do not contact trace – the county will.
- Collin County Health Services Center (CCHSC) is short staffed and is not doing contact tracing themselves. They forward cases to the state and Texas Health Trace will do the contact tracing.
- For PISD, an antigen (rapid) OR a PCR positive test result equals a positive COVID case. For the county and state, only PCR counts as a positive case and is reported. The others are ‘probable’ cases.
- Collin County Judge Chris Hill has stated that CCHSC does not have the authority to close schools for disease spread in the case of COVID.
- TEA has told school districts that they cannot close classrooms/facilities due to COVID. Also, they cannot mandate quarantining in cases of close contact. If a school district does close due to COVID, they will not receive a temporary attendance waiver like they might for a flu outbreak. Any missed days must be made up. For an individual school, this would mean they continue after the school district is closed. For PISD, we would add those days to the end of the school year.
- To truly break transmission, facilities need to close for a minimum of 14 days. However, this will not prevent community spread.
- If a school district advocates for anything other than in person learning, they face the real possibility of losing funding. Because of Bethany’s positive case count, PISD started “strongly encouraging” students in close contact of several positive cases in a class to choose the remote conferencing option. While this is available and sanctioned, PISD is taking a risk with this wording. PISD is doing it because it is the right thing to do.
- Bethany Elementary currently has the highest positive case percentage in PISD. Unfortunately, other PISD schools positive case percentages are climbing as well.
- Advocating to our elected officials in the Texas Legislature, County Leadership and our TEA commissioner is the best way to let them know how their policies are affecting our school community. Hearing from constituent parents has a larger effect than hearing from Superintendents, school administrators and teachers. Our local elected officials are:
In the last 2 days, I have personally been in communication with PISD Superintendent Sara Bonser, PISD’s Director for District Health Services Staci Antelo and extensively with our Principal Bryan Bird. Each of these people are dedicated and doing the ultimate best that they can for all PISD students and staff. They hear and feel our frustrations. They want what is best for our students both for their health and their education. This situation is not ideal, and they are doing the best they can within the guidelines, mandates, and executive orders they have been given by state and county government.
Because of my messages this week, PISD has been assigned a different epidemiologist at CCHSC who is much more responsive to our staff. Respectful, passionate, professional advocacy can affect change.
If you have questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out to me, Mr. Bird, or Mrs. Miller.
Stay healthy, Be safe,
Anna Hulse
Bethany Elementary PTA President
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Y’all, Texas politicians are playing politics with our children’s lives in a way that I’ve really never seen in my lifetime. I’ve contacted so many officials and everyone keeps passing the buck all the way up to Governor Abbott, who won’t make any changes no matter how many Texas students fall ill, in order to have a better chance in the next primary against Allen West and Don Huffines.
This what happens when the majority of the voters are so st00pid that they elect rePUKEians more st00pid then they!!
1Well OK the rePUKEians are not st00pid, they are plain evil and take advantage of the st00pid voters. They then do what is required to keep the money flowing in and do things that appeal to st00pid voters and around and around we go!!! And the dead will pile up!
It appears that the Delta variant being “as communicable as measles” means some parents don’t grasp the concept. If you were young before the MMR vaccine appeared, one infected kid in the school could give measles to every kid just by showing up. I remember my big brother coming down with measles and, like bowling pins, my siblings and I went down in red dots. Luckily no one had any side effects though they were more common than you’d guess. What my mother wouldn’t have given for an MMR vaccine to exist!
The saddest thing is that for the GOP to survive, they have to promote antagonism (they got nothin’ else going for them). They have to rile up folks, call names, blame somebody else for every problem, and keep the fires of grievance burning hot to keep the tribe in their camp. Sadly, reality, science, and common sense have been consumed by the blaze as well.
2I am horrified. But all I can do is hope and pray for the best, because at this point the (partial) solution has been refused by those who could make a difference…
3Actually I am kind of surprised that they haven’t already tried to outlaw the counting and reporting of COVID cases. Didn’t they try that in Florida?
4My heart goes out to TX kids, and to the parents who are trying to protect them. (My heart does not currently have space for the GoP politicians and their cult, who do not care if the kids are sick or die. My Empathy Department and Infection Commiseration Unit are full up.)
It didn’t have to be this way. In my town in CA, school just opened this week. 99% of the teachers and 95% of the staff are fully vaccinated, as are over 80% of kids 12 and older. Full masking is required at all times except eating, which is separated. Everyone has saliva testing once a week, courtesy of the university, which is using the high-throughput machines from plant genomics. They have already found a few cases – 17 kids, 3 staff – out of 8500 students, all tested, and at least a few thousand teachers and staff. They trace all contacts (made easier by having seating charts not just for classrooms but for where kids eat.) They notify contacts and mandate quarantine.
I’ve seen a lot of school kids around the neighborhood today (we don’t have school buses per se, so most of them ride bikes) and driving past schools, when I went to get my own routine saliva test, also required at university. All were masked, and no one appeared to be suffering!
5I’m guessing floriduh will have school covid infections comparable to TX due to the same type of leadership. It’s frightening to think about the numbers by the end of September.
6Here in mostly blue Oregon, cases are spiking everywhere but especially in red S Oregon (the part that wants to become W Iduho). Hospitals are out of beds and people can’t get in for any reason. Some schools have had to close at least for now.
If the kids are testing positive you just know whole families are sick including very vulnerable members.
I hate to break it to that guy, but without education there IS no freedom….only whatever the autocrats in charge want to tell you and do to you.
There’s no excuse for putting kids’ health in danger.
7And talking about floriduh, 14 portable morgues are headed that way “due to unprecedented deaths.” How could that not be predictable?
8It’s not just kids that are impacted from the Covid surge. That’s bad enough! Others are too:
“He loved his country. He served two deployments in Afghanistan, came home with a Purple Heart,” said his mother.
“Veteran dies in Texas after being denied ICU bed for treatable illness.”
All the hospital beds were full from Plague Greg’s policies….
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-us-hospital-icu-bed-shortage-veteran-dies-treatable-illness/
9Here in WA vaccines have been mandated for all school staff.
10Just curious – what level of education does the county judge have?
By demanding a ridiculous level of freedumb for themselves, these yahoos are restricting the freedom of everyone else. I was always told by my school teachers that with freedom comes responsibility. Maybe that’s the kind of education the NSGOP thinks we don’t need.
11You don’t have a whole bunch of freedom in the grave.
12Steve @ 6&7,
And speaking more about Florida, does anyone know what’s going on with their figures?
I check using the Worldometers site (from here in Australia), and for the last few days the Florida death count seems UNBELIEVABLY low. Like single digits each day, when other commentary is indicating at least a hundred.
13“Texas Senator: Angela Paxton”, et al…
AG Ken Paxturd’s wifey.
Y’all don’t have snowball’s chance in hell. Nobody in Texass does until we eliminate these vermin from government.
14https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/27/texas-mask-mandates-greg-abbott/
15Yeah.
Florida [Floriduh] COVID reporting has entered into a strange mode:
NBC had a story about Georgia and Florida, and how they are “revealing” information: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/covid-data-disappearing-some-states-even-amid-delta-surge-n1277715
16Given my conversation with a friend who is a Georgia middle-school principal and a general sense from my reading — I’m wondering if anyone is tracking teacher and paraprofessional job openings. Or the use of substitute teachers?
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