The Moot Mask Mandate

SAN ANGELO, TX — “I learned about it the afternoon the order was put out,” said Tom Green County Judge Steve Floyd. Tuesday afternoon, the controversial mask mandate for all schools in the county was about to be released when Floyd first heard about it. Two days later, Floyd said Thursday morning that he was on the phone with the Texas Attorney General’s office. Tom Green County had landed to AG Ken Paxton’s “List.” The Republican ally of Governor Greg Abbott had compiled a list of counties that were defying the governor’s order forbidding the issuance of a mandate to wear a mask. Tom Green County was highlighted.

“I said, ‘look, I had nothing to do with it. I don’t have that authority,’” Floyd relayed his plea to Paxton’s office. Floyd said the mandate came exclusively from Tom Green County Health Authority Dr. James Vretis and Vretis is not in the county judge’s chain of command. In fact, Vretis, in his capacity as health authority, answers ultimately to the governor himself.

Mayor Brenda Gunter was more surprised with the mask mandate for schools than Floyd. She said the first she heard of it was when citizens blew up her phone. Some even stopped by her restaurant to give her a piece of their minds.

“I had no idea this was going to happen,” she said.

Floyd heads up an informal countywide coronavirus task force with key leaders, like from the city, county, school districts, Angelo State University, and Goodfellow Air Force Base. He said the committee met via teleconference on Monday and nothing was mentioned about issuing a mask mandate the very next day.

“By the time the thing came out, I just stayed quiet. I didn’t want to inject any more confusion into the air,” Floyd said.

In Texas during heath emergencies, the local health authority becomes a state officer with access to state resources, Floyd said. And because of this and in this instance, it puts Dr. James Vretis in control of mask mandates.

By mid-morning Wednesday after the issuance of the mask mandate by Vretis, many school districts were announcing intentions to not follow the order.

“If we have a mask mandate, who is going to enforce it?” Floyd asked.

The Tom Green County Sheriff’s Office has crime to fight, not to get involved in a mask skirmish between students, parents and school officials, he said. Sheriff Nick Hanna has refused to enforce any Covid-19 protocols so far. This morning, Assistant Chief Tracy Fincher said the police department was hoping that all remain calm while the matter sorts itself out and enforcing mask mandates in not on his department’s agenda.

Among the districts bucking the mandate were Grape Creek, Wall, and Water Valley (“we have a 0.0049% positivity rate,” its superintendent stated on Facebook). Christoval ISD made no public announcements that we are aware of, but on Wednesday, the district announced on its Facebook page that there will be no Covid-19 restrictions at its first regular season football game scheduled for Friday night, August 27.

The San Angelo ISD also backed away from mandating masks and denied any involvement in the creation of the order. “The San Angelo ISD did not initiate the property control order,” San Angelo ISD Superintendent Carl Dethloff told us. Vretis’ order was called a “property control order” because it specified masks must be worn in places — or on property— where instruction is provided if a single case of Covid-19 reported infecting students or staff is detected.

On background, San Angelo ISD officials said their primary concern was keeping schools open this year with students in the classroom. The past year’s distance learning experiment did not age well with district officials. Classes over the internet resulted in poorer learning and students, such as kids in key grades such as the first, didn’t learn to read well last year. The Texas Education Agency’s STAAR results found, “Outcomes for In-Person Learners Appreciably Higher Than for Those Who Were Remote.”

To correct the performance problem at San Angelo ISD, teachers are being augmented to teach second graders what each student missed last year, for example. If mask mandates motivate parents to pull children out of school this year to home school, it will exasperate the problem and widen the learning gap.

Meanwhile, in neighboring Runnels County, Miles ISD shut down the schools until August 30 because many teachers had Covid-19. The district did not restart distance learning, either. The same thing happened in Iraan-Sheffield ISD in Pecos County.

Closing schools because Covid-19 is raging through small communities in west Texas was likely a primary reason Vretis provided the masking order. In an interview on the weekly video show Ask San Angelo LIVE! earlier this month, Vretis strongly suggested that parents have their kids wear masks at school. Floyd believes Vretis was offering cover to the school districts to require masks.

“He works in the middle of this pandemic,” Floyd noted. Vretis is an ER doctor at Shannon Medical Center that are overflowing with Covid-19 patients. And while Floyd was surprised by the mask order, he also believed Vretis has been pragmatic over the course of the pandemic. “Look, he worked with me to allow school districts to hold in-person graduations last year.”

“I don’t mind telling you that Shannon is stressed. Their staff is stressed, The way the numbers are climbing is a significant concern for this community,” Floyd said. Still, compared to neighboring Trauma Service Areas, San Angelo’s TSA K’s percentage of patients hospitalized with Covid-19 is the second lowest in the state with 8.52 percent as of August 26. Only TSA I in the El Paso region is lower at 6.17 percent. Other neighboring TSAs are much higher: Abilene’s TSA D is at 15.78 percent; Midland’s TSA J is at 18 percent; and Lubbock’s TSA B is at 20.22 percent.

Floyd said that Shannon CEO Shane Plymell is transparent about the impact the Delta Variant surge is having on his facilities. “The staffing is just not available,” Floyd said. “They are bringing back retired nurses. That 8.52 percent feels like the 15 percent we had during the Alpha surge because there aren’t many traveling nurses provided by the state this time.”

By late Thursday morning, Tom Green County’s mask mandate was rendered moot by the Texas Supreme Court. The high court granted an emergency motion for temporary relief in the case of Abbott v. San Antonio, keeping the decision to enforce mask mandates with the governor, not local government entities. The court said that the status quo has been gubernatorial oversight in decisions regarding the public during the pandemic, and this decision keeps with the status quo, according to the Court.

Will anything happen to Dr. Vretis? Floyd washed his hands of the whole affair. “He works for the City of San Angelo. That’s for Brenda to decide,” he said.