Schoolkids in the Lone Star State will return to public schools this fall and they won’t be required to wear masks, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Thursday.
Abbott made the announcement to state lawmakers, according to the Texas Tribune.
The Texas Education Agency said Commissioner Mike Morath has determined it will be safe for students to return to their campuses. School districts will not be required to force students to wear masks or be required to test them for COVID-19 symptoms.
The agency will release additional guidance for school districts next week.
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Florida Surgeon General Scott Rivkees has told his state’s pediatricians the new coronavirus inevitably will make its way into public schools this fall, but said he and his team are working on a plan to respond quickly when an outbreak occurs.
A look into the Florida Department of Health’s plan for safe schools reopening shows health officials have a full-scale effort underway to prepare for COVID-19 within schools by creating areas to isolate sick children, hiring contact tracers to identify homes with sick parents, and forming response teams to identify exposed students and arrange testing.
“We will have groups of contact tracers focusing specifically on the schools in the event children or staff are positive,” Rivkees told Florida’s pediatricians during a recent conference call, according to The Associated Press. “That is how we will help mitigate a potential outbreak.”
While the logistics of the school year are still being worked out, Florida health officials will push hard this summer to get school-age children vaccinated for other diseases and communicate with parents not to send children to school sick. Rivkees also said he is building teams of contact tracers to identify households where adults are infected and their kids may be, too.
Already more than 3,400 children in Florida have been infected with the new coronavirus and 103 hospitalized. Most of those infected are in South Florida. None have died from the virus. Along with COVID-19, 10 children in Florida have been diagnosed with Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome. MIS-C is a rare-but-serious coronavirus-related inflammatory syndrome in children and teenagers that comes on fast, affects multiple organs and can be life-threatening.
In Georgia, as back-to-school plans remain in limbo, Gov. Brian Kemp and state school Superintendent Richard Woods are asking the federal government to waive the public school testing requirement for another school year.
“Given the ongoing challenges posed by the pandemic and the resulting state budget reductions, it would be counterproductive to continue with high-stakes testing for the 2020-2021 school year,” the two said in a joint statement issued Thursday.
The state will submit a waiver request to the U.S. Department of Education for the suspension of the 2020-21 Georgia Milestones tests, they said. They will also seek to waive the mandate for a school report card based on those tests, which Georgia calls the College and Career Ready Performance Index.
Georgia appears to be the first state to make this announcement, they said.
The tests are the only statewide measure of student, teacher and school performance, and are required by federal and state law for accountability. Public schools are an essential service that consumes billions in tax dollars in Georgia alone.
U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos granted waivers for testing this spring after the coronavirus pandemic led to school closures across the country. All public schools in Georgia shuttered their buildings in March, most of them voluntarily but some following an order by Kemp.
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