STATE NEWS Texas ban on mask mandates in public schools back in place A federal appellate court has temporarily restored Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order prohibiting mask mandates in schools. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals restored the governor’s executive order on November 24th after Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed an earlier decision by a federal district in Austin that allowed schools to enact mask mandates to combat the spread of the coronavirus. The case was originally filed in August by the advocacy group Disability Rights Texas, which argued that the governor’s order and the Texas Education Agency’s enforcement of the ban put disabled children at risk and denied them access to public education. “The risks of contracting COVID-19 for these plaintiffs are certainly real, but the alleged injury to plaintiffs from the enforcement of [the governor’s order] is, at this point, much more abstract,” the 5th Circuit judges wrote. An attorney with Disability Rights Texas expressed disappointment with the 5th Circuit’s decision. “Our suit has always been about allowing students with disabilities at high risk of COVID to attend schools in person as safely as possible,” attorney Dustin Rynders said. “As new COVID variants threaten to make an improving situation worse again, it is imperative schools have the option of requiring masks in the class, campus or district as needed to protect vulnerable students.” An additional briefing and hearing on the matter will go before the 5th Circuit’s panel of judges at a later date.
Dallas Morning News
The Texas Tribune
NATIONAL NEWS Fourth student dies from Michigan shooting A fourth student has died following Tuesday afternoon's shooting at a Michigan high school. Justin Shilling, 17, died at about 10:45 a.m. Wednesday in the wake of the shooting at Oxford High School in Oxford Township, sheriff's officials said. Three other students, ages 14 to 17, died Tuesday, while seven people, including a teacher, were injured. The suspected gunman is in custody and is being charged as an adult. In the hours after the shooting , Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said that without the measures taken by students, as seen in a widely-circulated video posted on TikTok, the tragedy would have been worse. “It is also evident from the scene that the lockdown protocols, training and equipment Oxford schools had in place saved lives,” he said in a statement. David Riedman, lead researcher on the K-12 School Shooting Database, said that the lockdown procedures that were deployed in Oxford, in which students sheltered and stayed out of sight, “absolutely saved lives.” The training that appeared to be on display in Michigan is similar to what students all over the country are taught, he said. The shooting is the deadliest on school property this year, according to Education Week, which tracks such shootings in the United States and has reported 28 of them in 2021.
ABC News
New York Times
Washington Post
DISTRICTS New Dallas school to honor John Lewis A new $80m Dallas school, to be built on the existing site of the O.W. Holmes Humanities/Communications Academy, will honor civil rights leader John Lewis, and will also potentially include a community hub to serve east Oak Cliff residents. The current class at Holmes — which has about 700 students in Grades 6-8 — won’t reap the benefits of the new campus, which will be renamed the John Lewis Social Justice Academy at O.W. Holmes. The district will begin to gather community input for the multiyear construction process, with the school’s earliest opening date around 2024. “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood,” DISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa said Tuesday at the event celebrating the plans for Holmes. “We’re going to have a beautiful school here, and it’s going to honor a beautiful man who has been a pioneer for social justice in America.”
Dallas Morning News
Spall named Brenham ISD webmaster Tom Spall has been appointed to be the new Brenham ISD District Webmaster. Mr. Spall has been with the school district since 2012. Along with his current duties as the district’s Elementary Instructional Technology Specialist, he will take over the duties of updating and keeping the district website current. Spall will also act as the district’s lead liaison between the campus/department delegated website liaisons and current web-hosting provider, ezTask. The webmaster position arose due to the departure of Director of Communications Veronica Johannsen for a role at another school district.
Brenham Banner
CHARTER Michael Bloomberg announces $750m charter school growth plan Former New York City Mayor and 2020 presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg has launched a five-year, $750m effort to support charter schools in 20 U.S. cities. With plans to add 150,000 new seats for students, Bloomberg Philanthropies will award grants to new and existing nonprofit, non-virtual charter schools in New York City and 19 other as-yet-unannounced metro areas, provide funding to launch new models, and support efforts to create more racial diversity among charter teachers and leaders. Grants can also be used to build and upgrade facilities. As New York mayor from 2002 to 2013, Bloomberg supported exponential growth in the city’s charter sector, opening more than 150 charter schools. The foundation’s announcement follows recent data showing that during the pandemic, the charter sector has seen its highest period of growth since 2015. Charter schools, however, continue to face criticism from Democrats, who argue they drain resources and students from district schools.
The 74
Houston charter school founder sentenced for mail fraud conspiracy The founder of a now-shuttered Houston charter school has been sentenced to three years in federal prison and ordered to pay more than $335,000 in restitution after being convicted of conspiracy to commit mail fraud related to embezzled school funds. Richard S. Rose, who served as Zoe Learning Academy’s founder, chief executive, superintendent and chief financial officer, pleaded guilty in August to falsifying government reports through the mail to use school money for personal expenses, including a Honolulu timeshare, $30,000 in legal fees and a $75,000 lawsuit settlement. Zoe Learning Academy received a failing grade on the 2017 Texas Education Agency’s financial integrity rating for schools. The charter district also failed to meet state academic standards in 2013, 2015 and 2017.
Houston Chronicle
CLASSROOM Report finds that white characters continue to dominate school texts Educational materials don’t reflect the diversity of the nation’s schoolchildren, and many that do feature characters of color reinforce stereotypes, according to a research review from the New America think tank. The study analyzed more than 160 studies and published works on representation in children’s books, textbooks, and other media dating from the mid-20th century through the present. It found that white characters still dominate children’s media, including school textbooks. Characters of color are underrepresented compared to the demographics of U.S. youth (a little more than half of all schoolchildren in the country are children of color). Female characters are also underrepresented, though there has been an uptick over time. Still, girls of color may be left out: one cited 2020 study of books that won the Newbery Medal, an award for children’s literature, found that only 20% of Black characters and 25% of Asian American characters were female. There is less research on transgender representation in books, though the report cites one study on books with LGBTQ themes that found 14% of primary characters and 21% of secondary characters were transgender. “Over time, what the research shows is that we’ve made progress as far as having more gender-balanced representation, though ... that gender representation tends to be from a binary perspective,” said Amanda LaTasha Armstrong, a research fellow in New America’s Education Policy Program, and the author of the report. “We’re also having more representation from communities of different racial and ethnic groups, but there’s still a very clear disparity.”
Education Week
ELEMENTARY Argyle postpones elementary rezoning decision In a special meeting Tuesday night, Argyle ISD trustees tabled a decision about new elementary school zoning districts centered around its third elementary school. The future school, which is currently being referred to as simply Elementary School No. 3, will be located in Canyon Falls. The district broke ground on it in June, and it is scheduled to open for the 2022-23 school year. Currently, Argyle ISD elementary students who live in Harvest and Canyon Falls attend Argyle West Elementary, and the rest of Argyle ISD elementary students go to Hilltop Elementary. The district expects to need to build two more elementary schools within the next five years just to keep up with the expected growth. The board was presented with three different school zoning map options, and the third option is expected to be the one that would need the least amount of zoning changes in the near future. Elementary rezoning will be included on the December 13th agenda at the regular meeting of the Board of Trustees as a discussion/action item.
Cross Timbers Gazette
Time to remove tech from elementary school? When the pandemic hit in spring 2020 and most students learned from home, school districts purchased Chromebooks and other devices, and kids learned by working on screens of varying sizes. However, now that most schools have reopened five days a week, some experts are concerned about continued use of tech among younger children. In a piece for the Washington Post, clinical psychologist Annalise Caron explains why she believes it is time to take technology out of elementary school. She notes that, while the impact of screen use on brain development is nuanced, some findings indicate that devices cause young children to become overstimulated, lower their attention spans and have negative impacts on their reading comprehension. In 2019, the World Health Organization offered strict guidelines on screen use, noting that intensive use of digital media also decreases working memory and is associated with increased psychological problems. Caron also writes that, at the core of the argument to remove individual student computer devices " is the most basic skill — being able to delay gratification — which leads to better health and long-term outcomes overall. When we wait for rewards — like when we read a book to find an answer rather than searching Google — we learn that some unpleasantness can actually lead to the achievement of a goal."
Washington Post
HEALTH & WELLBEING Navigating the impact of long COVID Dealing with “long COVID," the persistent and recurring post-COVID conditions experienced for four or more weeks after initial infection, remains uncharted territory for school teachers and district officials. In July, the White House classified the lingering effects of chronic post-COVID syndrome a disability, which means employers and schools have to provide needed accommodations in compliance with Section 504 and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The challenging part to supporting students with long COVID is recognizing that there's no single way of saying “schools will handle long COVID this way,” according to Karen Oosterhous, Trees Network outreach support specialist at Robert Morris University. Schools will have to individualize instruction to meet the needs of each student, helping them compensate for the effects of long COVID that are unique to them, she added. “For things like fatigue, students may be exempt from gym or other physically taxing activities. They might be allowed to use the school elevator, or go to the nurse for breaks as needed,” Oosterhous said. Breaking down assignments into smaller segments is also recommended.
K-12 Dive
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