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January 31, 2022
As the Omicron variant grows in Texas, public high school students are turning to petitioning and leaving in an attempt to force school districts to demand more COVID-19 protocols, according to The Texas Tribune.
Students want to return to the rules of face masks or expand virtual learning. In some cases, they want school districts to be temporarily closed during the rise.
“We can do more and we choose not to do it [in order] to stay open, at all costs and with all the necessary means, “Tierney Pitts, protest leader and senior at Cedar Ridge High School in the independent school district of Round Rock, told The Texas Tribune. “It simply came to our notice then that we were open to everything.
Since restarting the school after the winter holidays, there have been 192,145 cases of COVID-19 per student and 61,142 cases of staff, The Tribune reported, citing the Texas Education Agency. This seems to be the highest level of cases since the beginning of the pandemic.
In the Fort Bend school district, more than 200 students have signed a petition calling for schools to be closed during the wave. One of these students, Jada Klerk, a freshman at William B. Travis High School, said she had asthma and that walking down the halls among unmasked classmates was stressful.
“Sometimes I don’t even want to breathe,” Clerk told The Tribune. “You really feel the breath of the people on you. We were so close [in the hallway]”
A student in the Garland school district, 11th-grader Fernando Alaniz, says Omicron is so common that three of his teachers are ill. Half of his eight teachers and most students do not wear masks, he told The Tribune.
Some 700 people have signed a petition asking Garland school officials to make changes, such as returning distance learning to students who take a positive test, renewing the mask rule, giving PCR tests and providing masks at school.
“It’s a shame that our school district doesn’t care about the health of students and staff, even though we’re going through a pandemic that took the lives of so many people in Texas,” the petition said.
Students from the Round Rock school district, north of Austin, left in an attempt to force the administration to impose more safety rules. More than 1,800 signed an online petition.
The Tribune said district officials had met with student protest organizers and agreed to some requests, such as more test sites and high-quality masks.
Jenny LaCost-Caputo, head of public affairs and communications at the Round Rock school district, told The Tribune that staff shortages make some of the requirements difficult to meet. For example, she said the area could not find enough people to track contacts. The district had a program earlier when there were enough people.
The Tribune said the Texas Attorney General is suing Round Rock ISD for requiring masks in schools, a rule that violates Gov. Greg Abbott’s ban on mask mandates. But Pitts, the student, said the mandate for masks does not apply and many students do not wear them.
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