San Antonio Standard

Lackland Independent School District (ISD) will still be requiring students to wear masks through the end of the school year and will follow other protocols other than Gov. Greg Abbott's executive order made in March preventing government entities and public schools from mandating masks. 

Superintendent Dr. Burnie L. Roper said Lackland ISD follows different protocols because of being located on a military installation. 

"LISD will require masks for the remainder of this school year. We are not sure what next year will look like. Because we are located on a military installation, we are subject to the rules of the federal government. We will be working with the base to determine what our protocols will be," Roper told the San Antonio Standard.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott | gov.texas.gov/

A press release from the governor's office said that for public schools, the lift of the mask mandate will begin June 4, which most schools will have already ended their school year. The mandate does include school administration office buildings.

"The Lone Star State continues to defeat COVID-19 through the use of widely-available vaccines, antibody therapeutic drugs, and safe practices utilized by Texans in our communities," Abbott said in the release. "Texans, not government, should decide their best health practices, which is why masks will not be mandated by public school districts or government entities. We can continue to mitigate COVID-19 while defending Texans' liberty to choose whether or not they mask up."

Roper said he will be working with staff and the military base to decide how the next school year should move forward with mandating masks. 

"We will be working with the base to determine safety protocols. I will be working with my staff this summer to determine what our guidelines for the 2021-2022 school year will look like," Roper said. 

Effective by the end of the day on June 4, the Texas Education Agency will have to amend its guidelines mandating face-covering that will no longer be required of parents, students, teachers and visitors. 

The multiple different mandates and executive orders issued since July 2020 have caused confusion for many government entities, and some are refusing to follow the newest order from March. 

In July of 2020, Abbott then instituted a bonafide mask mandate, requiring virtually all Texans to wear a mask in public spaces. In his first order, Abbott prohibited counties from mandating masks, but the order very "round-a-about" and hinted at the loopholes which allowed for counties to skirt his order while continuing to mandate masks, Texas Monthly reported. Ultimately, it allowed counties to force businesses to mandate masks.

Governor Abbott's actions have often been contrasted with those of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who rescinded the most meaningful COVID-19 restrictions back in the Fall of 2020. Gov. DeSantis did, however, allow localities to mandate masks, but neutered any ability they had to enforce any orders, NPR reported.

Gov. DeSantis did recently issue a new order that bans local governments from mandating masks two weeks before Gov. Abbott's order, but Florida did not apply this order to public schools. This is one major contract to Gov. Abbott's order, the Tampa Bay reported. 

ABC 13 reported that Texas has had zero COVID-19 deaths for the first time in over a year, which did play a role in Gov. Abbott's executive order also extending to public schools.