TYLER, Texas — Tyler ISD and schools across East Texas are stocked up on personal protective equipment (PPE).
"We were given, provided nearly 200,000 masks to provide our students and our staff as well, so everyone will be getting a cloth mask and we will also have some paper masks just in case someone leaves a mask at home," Dr. Marty Crawford, Tyler ISD Superintendent, said.
The Texas Department of Emergency Management and Gov. Greg Abbott's strike force in conjunction with the Texas Education Agency also provided the district with 2,100 face shields. Dr. Marty Crawford says there's plenty of masks to go around, even for the younger learners.
"We're encouraging the young ones to wear them and certainly there may be some underlying health issues and that will be communicated to the school nurse, principal and teachers and maybe a staff member may not be able to wear them and we certainly understand that, but we really feel a responsibility to make sure we are doing what we can. What I can do and what you can do to wear some type of face covering. Putting one layer over my mouth and one layer over your mouth, that's two layers over our mouths and our airways, so we don't transfer this," Dr. Crawford said.
In TISD's Return to Learn plan says while in the classroom "brain breaks" and "face covering breaks" will be implemented as needed, at the discretion of the campus or teacher.
Local private schools implemented their own policies for wearing masks.
At All Saints Episcopal School in Tyler, faculty and students will receive at least two face coverings from the school which they got from a company that made socks, but pivoted in the pandemic.
"It's a really soft material that has a logo for us and I think these will be very comfortable for students. We also have some other varieties and for our teachers we've also purchased face coverings that include a clear shield that our younger students really need to see a teachers emotions and lips," Mike Cobb, Head of School at All Saints Episcopal School, said.
All Saints developed four different scenarios for safely coming back to campus and will reopen in Scenario 2.
"Our students 5th-12th, will be required to wear face coverings. There might be times in the day where they are allowed to take their face covering off, but only with teacher permission where social distance is allowed or outdoors with that social distance as well," Cobb said.
Social distancing is not a concept most children inherently embrace easily. They're accustomed to collaborative learning from a very young age – sitting side by side in circles at story time, but it's a lesson they'll learn this year.
At Grace Community School in Tyler, they'll be employing several strategies to keep students safe. "We are also using physical distancing, like so many others are, keeping the desks further apart, keep the kids more spread out," Jay Ferguson, Head of School at Grace Community School, said.
"We are using some age appropriate podding in smaller groups. A lot of times, we would release them in large groups to recess, we will do smaller groups. It's a CDC recommendation and I think it's a good one," Ferguson said.
Some schools, like All Saints and Mineola, implemented one-way hallways. "We do one way," Cody Mize, Superintendent of Mineola ISD, said. "It's pretty structured the way the traffic flows. Our teachers do a good job of getting students through there, everything went great."
The volatility of the coronavirus forced schools to re-imagine and in some cases rebuild spaces to create social distance and safety barriers.
"We actually decided we are a maker school, so we decided to make our own partitions, so we made all those ourselves. We used our fab lab and maker space to actually fabricate with our laser cutter and some of our other tools," Cobb said.
We've all been embracing the outdoors, now, more than ever. Schools are taking a page out of that book, as well.
"We are going to take advantage of this whole thing as an opportunity to do more outdoor learning. It's just better for kids to get outdoors in God's creation, fresh air and sunshine, maybe not when it's 99," Ferguson said.
"We've now created 45 outdoor learning zones, just beautiful spaces. We've been committed to outdoor learning with our learning farm and our outdoor learning center, but even for us we've had to think outside of the box. We had 150 acres we weren't using," Cobb explained.
For safety reasons, when masks can't be worn, such as lunch will also look different.
"You may wind up having breakfast at 7:30 a.m. and you may have to turn around and have your lunches at 10 o'clock. They may have to go through 1 o'clock or so," Crawford explained. "The way we've rebuilt these high schools. We can actually have two lunches, but they're talking about three to four lunches and using the courtyards and have that distancing going on."
But at the end of the day, it really comes down to compliance. "Just watching the parents come in, it was great to see them walk their child to class. Everybody was wearing masks, hand sanitizer, temperature checks when they came in. I was just really proud," Mize said.
Educators and parents are trying everyday to keep coronavirus contained and students together on campus for those who chose that option this year.
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