Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a guidance letter to the state’s private religious schools on Friday [July 17] stating that they “need not comply” to recent local and county health orders barring in-person instruction until after Labor Day.As I reported Saturday, California Gov Newsom has ordered both private and public schools in the state to provide only remote instruction at the start of the school year, with highly complex (and likely unachievable) criteria for any resumption of in-person instruction down the road. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles announced in a newsletter,“As protected by the First Amendment and Texas law, religious private schools may continue to determine when it is safe for their communities to resume in-person instruction free from any government mandate or interference,” Paxton’s letter read. “Religious private schools therefore need not comply with local public health orders to the contrary.”
Although the archdiocese had planned to begin the school year with in-person instruction, the state's changing requirements have made that impossible.It appears that although Texas sees US constitutional grounds for not micromanaging religious schools, California doesn't. Although there might be grounds for a challenge, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles appears to be taking a strategy of weathering the storm, at least for now.. . . "We are being called to be hopeful, resilient, and faithful people. As one Catholic community, God calls us to come together once again for our children during difficult times. We will band together as we did in the spring because our Catholic schools are a gift — it’s where our students learn and love, and our families grow in faith and community,” said Paul Escala, Superintendent of the Department of Catholic Schools.
The clearest Catholic school policy statement I could find in Texas is from the Archdiocese of San Antonio in a letter dated July 17:
I am extremely proud of the work our school personnel have done this Summer to prepare for the difficult challenges of the upcoming school year. Although our remote learning efforts last Spring went exceptionally well, we have taken new lessons learned from that time to strengthen our plans moving forward.I read the letter to mean that although some parents may be nervous about in-person learning, this is pretty much what the archdiocese is committed to accomplish. I note that while the Atonement Academy, the only ordinariate school, is not part of the Archdiocese of San Antonio, it does intend to reopen for in-person classes.. . . We have heard some comments such as, “If schools open remotely, we will go to public schools because of the tuition.” It is a challenging reality we face that if families choose the “free” option of remote learning during this time, we may not have the same number of Catholic schools in operation to return to when this crisis is over. This is the time to commit to what we value in our faith-based education. Although academic programming remains a high priority, coming together as a community of faith remains at the heart of what we do.
Texas and California are in similar circumstances over COVID, with increasing "cases" (an ambiguous term referring to tests that may reflect either infection or the presence of antibodies, but likely without symptoms), though "peaks" in both cases are probably related to the authorities' tacit encouragement of mass protests over the past two months.
However, only California has extended an order for remote instruction to religious schools, which is an indication of the arbitrary and highly political nature of local response to the "pandemic".
It's likely that pushback will come from parents. One of my wife's friends has spirited her daughter to Nevada so she can qualify for normal college admission procedures, for example. School athletic programs, canceled if remote learning is required, are nevertheless key to college admission plans or possible career interests in many cases. In St Louis:
On July 6th following four months of closures, St. Louis County officials under the leadership of Sam Page allowed sports leagues to begin practices.The outcome I expect is that there will be more and more organized response to on again-off again regulation-by-whim, based on spurious "science", by citizens whose lives are directly affected. The odd thing is that in most parts of the US, probably now including California, the Democrats have lost a majority of the Catholic vote, which they could once rely on.Then on Monday St. Louis County Executive Sam Page shut down youth sports . And, Sam Page shut down all sports contest in the county in this autumn season. Sam Page says the science of it. But he will not provide any data on his data to parents that are local. Nowadays hundreds and possibly thousands of St. Louis region parents are demanding that the County Commissioner supply them information on local coronavirus amounts or they will sue the county Friday.
