Despite the 87th Texas Legislature's failure to pass legislation that would have funded virtual learning for public schools in the 2021-22 school year, Humble ISD began the fall semester on Aug. 10 with both in-person and remote learning options.
As previously reported by Community Impact Newspaper, Superintendent Elizabeth Fagen said at the July 20 HISD board meeting that the district was continuing to pursue a virtual learning option for the 2021-22 school year. At the next school board meeting Aug. 10—the first day of HISD's fall semester—Fagen announced that virtual learning would be available.
"A lot of districts across the state sort of said, 'Well, OK, virtual instruction's not going to be funded,' and so they stopped their models," Fagen said during the Aug. 10 meeting. "Humble ISD continued to move forward and worked with the Texas Education Agency and legislators in hopes of some level of a compromise because we believed that it was in the best interest of our staff and students to continue forward and not dump all of that work that we had done to create Virtual Learning 2.0. ... At the end of the day and with the support of this board—very courageous support by the way—we moved forward with offering virtual in the absence of a funding model."
Without the legislation's passage, public school districts will not receive average daily attendance funding from the state for remote learners. As a result, Fagen said HISD could face an $8 million-$10 million loss.
