I was perusing social media last night when I stumbled upon a picture in one of the groups I belong to. It was a teacher convocation in Lubbock. They say a picture speaks a 1000 words and this picture was speaking volumes. It showed hundreds of teachers packed into a cafeteria and not a single one was wearing a mask.

Unfortunately, the picture is difficult to find or I would have posted it here. It seems Lubbock ISD took the picture off of their social media when they got blasted in the comments. Convocations are feel good events for central office administrators. Teachers and campus level administrators have never gotten a whole lot out of them even in the before times.

I remember one particular year where the district brought in the woman from “Dangerous Minds” and had her speak. In another year we had an Elvis impersonator (actually that might have been the same year). We’ve also had the superintendent ride into the room in a toy school bus. These events obviously preclude us from doing over a hundred things more worth our time.

I admittedly never took classes in campus leadership for my masters, but counselors did take a few courses in common with future principals. One of those should have been Communication 101. There are things that should be communicated face to face. There are things that should be communicated in an email. Obviously, there are things that don’t need to be communicated at all. In the age of COVID, convocations should be a thing of the past.

It is hard to call wearing masks and practicing social distancing civil disobedience, but in this state I guess it qualifies. Texas seems to be in a race with Florida and Louisiana for brain dead governance. Abbott has to be in the lead here because if he doesn’t get you with COVID then you always have the opportunity of freezing to death. He truly is an equal opportunity jackass.

It is high time we take the talk of freedom seriously. He has banned school districts from mandating masks, but he cannot bar us from wearing them ourselves. He cannot bar us from encouraging others to do the same. In order to do that they would have to outlaw masks outright. I can’t imagine he would want to go that far, but I’d put nothing past him at this point.

Meanwhile, there is no real reason for district wide meetings to take place in person. We managed to get by with Zoom last year. We didn’t even hold in person faculty meetings. Again, it goes back to Communication 101. If the goal is disseminating information then we need to consider how we can do that efficiently and safely. Our governor may be stupid, but there’s no reason why the rest of us need to be.