SAN ANTONIO — Most San Antonio-area schools start days or weeks from now, but Northeast ISD's year-round Castle Hills Elementary is already in session, and teachers have already had to learn to balance masked and unmasked students this year.
Governor Greg Abbott recently released an order maintaining a ban on public school mask mandates, meaning decisions about masking are up to parents.
"Definitely some parents want to make sure that their child does wear their mask, but usually, if they've told their child, I haven't had to remind them necessarily to wear the mask," Cheryl Cuevas, a teacher at Castle Hills Elementary said. "Some parents like the child to be seated with other children that wear the mask, but sometimes, you have the opposite where they wear the mask, but don't want to be singled out. So, that's where we teach that respect."
In Cuevas' classroom, about half of the students were wearing masks, essentially based on parent preference.
"The teachers are being respectful of their child as well," Cuevas said. "It's not just student to student. Teachers are respecting their child as well, and we're here to educate their child. It's not just about the academics, it's about emotional learning, physical space."
KENS 5 asked Cuevas about the experience of having some students masked and others unmasked. Cuevas says teaching respect has been key.
"If kids are going to wear their mask, [or] if they're not going to wear the mask, that's their parent's decision, and we're going to respect that," Cuevas said. "When students start coming in, you just start building that community of learners. Not only academically, but socially -- what our expectations are, how we're going to treat each other -- so it's just that basics right now of creating a community of learnings."
Cuevas says students are also very used to frequently washing their hands, and some distancing is in place, though the classroom looks a little different than it did last year.
"When we all started getting back into school, we started thinking about how we wanted our desks placed, because you remember last year was all about spatial distance, six feet apart." Cuevas said. "And that really did not lean towards how we normally teach, because typically our normal learning style is cooperative learning. So, you can see clusters in my room and an open space where I like to pull them for mini lessons, I might do for different content areas. We do still pull our desks out a little bit to help with that. So getting prepped for that was basically how are we going to organize our classroom."
The Texas Education Agency (TEA) also released new public health guidance for schools and parents on Aug. 5, detailing everything from masks to contact tracing COVID-19 cases.
In the document, the TEA said schools must notify their local health authority and the Texas Department of State Health services of test-confirmed cases of COVID-19, whether it be any teacher, staff member, student or visitor. The full details here.