CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A week ago, some students went back to the classroom for face to face instruction at CCISD schools. A move that the president of the local American Federation of Teacher’s union, Nancy Vera had been fighting against.
Now, Vera wants to know why school board meetings are still being held virtually. Vera believes if teachers were forced into face to face instruction then school board members should also have to open their meetings to the public.
On Monday night CCISD School Board members held their meeting once again in the virtual world. That did not sit well with Nancy Vera.
Vera believes that if Teachers had to go back to face-to-face teaching then school board members should have had the district administration building open and this meeting being held in front of the public.
“I think there’s an issue because they are not demonstrating to their employees that they have faith enough to move forward and to meet just like the teachers and the students are meeting at the schools,” said Vera. “I think it’s cowardly and I think it’s a lack of foresight.”
CCISD schools did welcome some students back to the classroom beginning back on September 8. 3News asked school board president Janie Bell why Monday’s school board meeting was held virtually Instead of being opened up to the public.
“I would’ve liked to this past Monday, that would be yesterday, I just think it’s a lot at one time and we are going to be face-to-face at the end of month which will be September 28,” said Bell.
Bell says the board and administration staff have been focused on how to best re-open the schools again, trying to get the right protocols in place to make that happen.
Bell says some of that focus is going to be shifted to allow for face-to-face board meetings beginning on the 28. Bell cautions that all the COVID-19 guidelines will have to be observed so that is going to limit who can come in at one time.
“By the time you get in the board members, the administration that has to be there, the lawyers you’re not gonna be able to have your gallery of visitors there like the students, the teachers, the people who are coming to support something or people who are coming to not support something,” said Bell. “There’s gonna have to be a change there and a lot of our presenters, we'll probably have to bring them in one at a time.”
Nancy Vera says,” Hindsight is 2020. There’s no excuse for the lack of foresight. It’s too bad that the district had to be called out to do the right thing.”