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Texans support mask mandates in schools, News/UT-Tyler poll finds

Half of all respondents thought that masks should be required in all K-12 schools, with another quarter of respondents saying that the decision should be left up to individual school districts.

As conservative state leaders have moved to bar districts from requiring masks and to limit the discussion of race and racism in public schools, a sizable majority of Texans disagree with such stances, according to a new poll from The Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler.

While Gov. Greg Abbott has prioritized those issues over the past six months, the poll indicates that voters, including those who identify as independent, don’t approve of such partisanship in public schools. The News/UT-Tyler poll was conducted Sept. 7-14 with 1,148 people from across the state.

Half of all respondents thought that masks should be required in all K-12 schools, with another quarter of respondents saying that the decision should be left up to individual school districts. Only 20% of respondents opposed mask requirements. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

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In May, Abbott issued an executive order prohibiting school districts and most other governmental entities from requiring masks. With rising COVID-19 case counts heading into the school year, dozens of school districts — including Dallas, Plano, Richardson and Garland ISDs — defied the order, implementing some form of a mandate under the protection of temporary restraining orders.

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The Texas Education Agency revised its guidance on Aug. 19, stating that it would not enforce the mask ban because of an ongoing legal battle. And, in recent weeks, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued several districts, including Richardson, for defying Abbott’s order.

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Those who identified themselves as parents were more supportive of mask mandates (57%), as were Black (65%) and Latino (57%) respondents.

Similarly, 55% of all respondents opposed Abbott’s ban on mask mandates, although that question broke along partisan lines. While 66% and 67% of Democrats and independents, respectfully, opposed such a ban, 67% of Republicans were in favor of Abbott’s order.

Ladarius Clark, a 29-year-old Balch Springs resident who participated in the poll, said he supports mask requirements at schools because “no one wants to see their kids suffer.”

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Clark, who has three elementary-aged children in Mesquite ISD, had two previous bouts of COVID-19, in November and January.

“You don’t want something to endanger your kids, and you don’t want them getting COVID and bringing it back with them to the house to get someone else sick,” he said.

The poll also asked whether “teachers should be permitted to discuss how historical examples of discrimination in our laws apply to inequalities today,” referencing the debate on critical race theory that the Legislature took up this year.

The poll found 56% of respondents either strongly agreed or somewhat agreed that teachers should be allowed to discuss such topics, while 27% either strongly disagreed or somewhat disagreed.

Critical race theory is an academic discipline that examines the way laws and governmental policies have upheld systemic racism. Many in the conservative movement, however, have conflated the theory with other efforts from school districts on equity, diversity and inclusion.

Despite arguments from educators that critical race theory isn’t part of local or statewide curriculums, Abbott signed two bills prohibiting the teaching of the theory’s tenets, and stopping districts from being able to compel teachers to discuss “currently controversial issues of public policy or societal affairs.”

Kevin Bartlett, a 55-year-old Mesquite resident who responded to the poll, said he didn’t support the teaching of such historical analogies because those lessons would be focused on a particular viewpoint, and not “as it actually happened.”

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“You’re not teaching history as it was,” Bartlett said. “You’re teaching history as you want it to be.”

The Dallas Morning News/UT-Tyler Poll is a statewide random sample of 1,148 registered voters conducted between Sept. 7-14. The mixed-mode sample includes 292 registered voters surveyed over the phone by the University of Texas-Tyler with support from ReconMR and 857 registered voters randomly selected from Dynata’s panel of online respondents. The margin of error is +/- 2.9 percentage points, and the more conservative margin of sampling error that includes design effects from this poll is +/- 3.7 percentage points for a 95% confidence interval. The online and phone surveys were conducted in English and Spanish. Using information from the 2020 Current Population Survey and the Texas Secretary of State, the sample’s gender, age, race/ethnicity, education, metropolitan density and vote choice were matched to the population of registered voters in Texas.

The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.

The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from The Beck Group, Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, The Meadows Foundation, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University and Todd A. Williams Family Foundation. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.

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