Vanessa Larez graduated in 2018 with an associate degree from Kathlyn Joy Gilliam Collegiate Academy in Dallas ISD. She attended Southern Methodist University with support from Dallas County Promise, graduating in three years in 2021 with a degree in communications and Spanish. She is now a development and communications coordinator at Bachman Lake Together, an early-childhood program in Dallas. The Bush Institute’s Justine Taylor-Raymond sat down with Vanessa this fall to discuss how her high school experience shaped her.

The following interview excerpt has been edited for clarity and length.

JTR: How did early college help you?

VL: Having access to college classes in high school helped me understand that you sign up for classes – and if you don’t sign up within a certain time, those classes will disappear. Or understanding that you have to read your syllabus, that the syllabus has a purpose, and you follow the deadlines and policies they have with missing a class, being tardy, or late assignments. It’s not the same as high school. What may seem like common knowledge isn’t. And having access and exposure to that was important.

Do you feel like you are in a better position coming from your high school? Do you feel like going to the collegiate academy, getting your associate degree set you on a different path?

I don’t know if it set me on a different path, but it made the path easier. I feel like because I already got the two years and got exposure to things, I didn’t have to struggle and relearn those things.

Tell me about your SMU experience.

I do feel like I had a head start, but still it’s not the same. I think it was hard for me to adjust socially and that impacted how I adjusted academically. I failed my first exam at SMU. I was so shy to ask questions. It was a lecture-style class. Wasn’t too large, less than a 100 students, but I was too shy or embarrassed to talk to people next to me or ask a question if I was a little bit confused. SMU isn’t that big of a school compared to a UT, but it was big to me.

When I got to SMU, I was a part of a program called. They focused on bridging the gap for traditionally underrepresented students, like first generation college students, low-income students, students of color, students from very rural areas, students from certain religious backgrounds, etc. So, I was with other students who shared similar feelings, maybe on varying degrees, but we all had that shared experience of being underrepresented. Knowing other students like you helped and the staff leading the program were there to help you. We were paired with peer counselors, older students who had been part of the program. My sophomore year, I worked as a peer counselor. So, I feel like it still took me a while to adjust, but it would have been way worse had I not been a part of that program.

Did having access to an associate degree make a difference? Would it help others, too?

I did benefit from the head start. You give students access to free classes, but that does not mean all kids are going to succeed. The barrier isn’t just money or not having classes in front of you. Some students have to prioritize work — helping to provide for their family. Having free college classes doesn’t matter if your lights aren’t on.

Not all students got an associate degree in your high school class. What were some of the barriers for those students?

College is not for everyone, and that is totally okay. I think support at home — maybe if your parents or family don’t go to college, you don’t have that extra understanding of the value. You may already feel it’s not for you because haven’t seen anyone before you do it. So it’s not just the barriers of family needs, but also mental barriers.

I have some peers that say my dad works in XYZ field, I’ll just do that because I know it will make money. That is secure. To them, college wasn’t secure. And, honestly, it isn’t. College doesn’t get you the job. You get the job with the tools you got from college. But it’s still not guaranteed.

Follow this four-week series here.

Justine Taylor-Raymond is senior program manager for education reform at the George W. Bush Institute. 

As COVID cases surged across the country this summer, fueled by spread of the highly infectious Delta variant, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention joined the American Academy of Pediatrics in recommending that all students and staff wear masks in school. But in Texas, as in a handful of other conservative states, an executive order banning mask mandates forbade school districts from following that guidance.

In Dallas, Superintendent Michael Hinojosa felt that he was faced with a choice: risk over 153,000 students’ safety or risk legal challenges. The superintendent chose the latter, defying Gov. Greg Abbott’s ban and paving the way for dozens of other districts in the state to follow the same path.

Now nearly a month into the school year, and as COVID rages through the Dallas community, the struggle is making its way through state courts. And all the while, Hinojosa is contending with the urgent question of how to bring students back up to speed after a year of disrupted learning.

This year, Dallas is rolling out discipline reforms to end racial disparities in suspension, new social-emotional supports and revamped school calendars to boost students’ learning time.

ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ caught up with Hinojosa over the phone to hear how those efforts are unfolding and get the latest on the district’s legal showdown over masks.

This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ: It’s been a pretty surreal back-to-school season and Dallas has been in the news a lot. What’s top of mind for you right now?

Hinojosa: Last year was a year like no other, and this August has been an August like no other. Even as surreal as last year was, this August has been even crazier.

On Aug. 3, our county went to code red (representing high COVID transmission). The very next day, I’m attending a meeting of some superintendents 
 and we heard from a very prominent attorney that maybe the governor can’t enforce this (ban on mask mandates). So the Houston superintendent calls me and is telling me they’re thinking about implementing a mask mandate protocol and so I said, “I’m with you.” I really felt it was under my authority, since I have the authority to run the day-to-day operations of the school district.

Aug. 9 we announced our mask protocols, and then everything breaks loose.

I’ve been following along with the legal developments. Dallas ISD’s mask mandate was challenged, and then a judge ruled in your favor. But now the state attorney general has appealed. Can you give me a sense of where you think this whole thing is headed?

Well, it changes almost on a daily basis.

We prevailed at the district court. But the governor (Greg Abbott) and attorney general (Ken Paxton) can appeal to an appeals court and we think we’ll win there. But we think eventually we’re going to lose at the (Texas) Supreme Court 
 because they’re all conservative members.

It’s very interesting that the attorney general and the governor have both said publicly that they’re going to prosecute anybody who implements a mask protocol. But in the court pleadings, they said that they had no authority to do that. Then the commissioner of education (Mike Morath) has come out and said that they’re not going to enforce anything until all of these court proceedings are over.

So what I predict is that eventually this will go to the Supreme Court and we will be told at some point that we cannot have our mask protocol as we want it. But there’s going to be no enforcement, because I don’t see the local district attorneys coming after all 60 superintendents in Texas that are defying the governor’s executive order.

We’ve said all along, this was temporary. Come November, if we get back under 500 COVID cases in the county and we’ve stopped the spread on campuses, then I’ll be glad to lift the mask mandate. I don’t really like it myself, but we’re trying to protect the health and safety of our students.

As I’m sure you know, the federal government is opening civil rights probes into five states over their ban on mask mandates in schools. Texas isn’t on that list because the issue is already in the hands of the courts. But more broadly, what type of federal involvement might be useful in Texas? And do you see bans on mask mandates as a civil rights issue?

One of the reasons [the U.S. Department of Education] didn’t go after Texas is that they now have the understanding that what the governor has done is unenforceable. So that’s why we weren’t included in that order.

But it could be a civil rights issue. We’ll have to see how that plays out. We do get federal dollars for special education and economically disadvantaged students and, of course, they have given us significant dollars for the Recovery Act. So the feds do have some skin in this game and they’re not just sitting on the sidelines.

Seems like the federal government is trying to find out whether bans on mask mandates systematically exclude specific students, perhaps immunocompromised students from the classroom.

Yeah, that’s the focus of their inquiry, which gives them standing on this matter and, of course, those students are all over the country, so it does give them an entrĂ©e, I believe. But I’m not an attorney.

Over the weekend, Dr. Fauci told CNN that school [COVID] vaccine mandates for eligible students are a good idea based on the benefit-to-risk ratio. Schools already require a number of other vaccinations for enrollment and the FDA recently gave full approval to the Pfizer shot for folks 16 and up. What are your thoughts on the topic of mandating student vaccinations?

I’m supportive. I’m not ready to litigate at this time yet. What we’ve done instead to start with is we’re giving a $25 gift card for any student who provides his or her proof of vaccination. So we’re going down that path, we’re going a little bit more slowly (than we did with our mask policy).

But we would be supportive, especially when our younger students can take the vaccine, and we’re now hearing late November, early December when that vaccination will be available. I would be in favor of [a student immunization requirement]. You’re exactly right. We require other vaccines and so I would be very supportive of that, although I’m not going to be as assertive on that one as we have been on the mask protocol.

So just to clarify, when students under 12 do become eligible for shots that might open the door for Dallas to move toward mandating student vaccines? 

Yes, I would definitely consider it at that point because it’d be much more universal.

And for staff vaccine mandates, they’re banned in Texas but have been implemented in a number of states. Do you think making COVID shots mandatory for teachers might be an appropriate public health measure? And how do politics play in?

We have 22,000 employees and so we told them that we would give them a $500 stipend if they prove that they were vaccinated. Within three hours, we had 6,000 staff turn in their documentation. We are now up to around 11,000 and then the ones that just went out and took the vaccine, it takes them a while to get their documentation. So we anticipate we’ll get probably three-quarters on a voluntary basis.

But to answer your question, yes, I would be very supportive, especially for campus employees who deal with children to be required to have a vaccination. But even our county hospital can’t require vaccination in Texas for their nurses because of the state laws that are in place. When San Antonio ISD tried to do that, they got halted by the attorney general.

And in a sentence or two, what’s at stake in these safety decisions for students, families and teachers?

Everything’s at stake here.

Not only their safety, but the data is overwhelming that in-person instruction is by far the best. A few, maybe five percent of the students, do better virtually. But can you imagine if we have to have students at home because [COVID] spread got so bad that they lose another year of instruction? A whole generation could be at risk of falling so far behind that they can’t catch up. So there’s a lot at stake.

We’re very proud that we got to 97 percent of our projected enrollment and out of that, 96 percent of it is in person. So our students are glad to be back. Our families are glad to be back, but boy, we’ve got a big hill to climb academically.

On that topic of catching students up, especially given the fact that more often than not, some of those students who fell furthest behind last year were those who perhaps had fewer supports or financial resources at home, what efforts are underway in Dallas to help kids get back up to speed? I read about a tutoring program, for instance.

Well, we had 36,000 households without connectivity, so we put together a program called Operation Connectivity to connect our families and we executed on that plan. [At first] we did hotspots, but now we put up towers so that at least they can have access if they’re having to learn from home.

We’re also going to have tutoring during the school day, afterschool and in the summer.

But we now have three different calendars. One of them is a year-round calendar, where you get more time. Another one is what we call an intersession calendar, where you go five weeks, and then you’re off a week, go another five weeks, and you go off a week. We catch students up [who are behind during that week off]. For our most challenging schools — we have 60 that we call “high-priority campuses” — we have a very robust afterschool program from 3 to 6 p.m. for enrichment activities and strong academic activities to try to get them caught up.

And we’ve completely reinvented our summer school. So we’re doing all of those things all at the same time to accelerate learning.

Can you tell me a bit more about those different calendars? Where did the idea come from, what’s the goal, and do you know of other districts using that same model?

There’s a school district in the El Paso area called Socorro that has had this intersession calendar ever since the ‘90s and they’ve had good academic results where they bring in the students that are behind during the week that they’re off. Garland ISD, which is one of our neighbors, went to that calendar last year, but there is no other district that has the multiple options that we have.

To be one of the five schools using the year-round calendar or [one of the] 41 schools that are in intersession calendars, each had 80 percent of the teachers and 80 percent of the parents opt into those calendar options. 
 We didn’t want to force families to take one of those calendars.

At scale, nobody else is doing it like we are, other than the two that I mentioned, Garland and Socorro. So we think that students in those schools they’re going to have a better opportunity to catch up than if you just went with a traditional calendar.

We’re using a lot of our federal ESSA dollars to pay for this extra time. We know who our best teachers are, and our best teachers get more money to teach those intersession opportunities. Instead of working 180 days, they’ll be working 210 days. So there’s significant dollars that will be going into the pockets of our teachers, and especially our best teachers, because they’ll get the opportunity to do a lot of those enrichment and intervention opportunities.

I know last year Dallas moved to end suspensions. Where does that effort now stand?

We’re pulling forward with it. Ten percent of our students are African-American males, yet 51 percent of our suspensions were African-American male, until now. If you [engage in severe misbehavior] you will still be suspended, but we’re talking about the discretionary suspension and the discretionary suspensions were 75 percent of our suspensions. We’re going to have a different alternative on how to redirect their behavior.

We’ll have some data sets at the end of the first nine weeks about where we are and we’ll also have data in a year about how this journey to redirect behavior through these reset centers went. So stay tuned.

We’ll be following those results. Turning to the social-emotional well-being of the wider student population, I know that last fall Dallas ISD teachers were trained in trauma-informed care. What results did you see from that training? How do you see Dallas ISD’s commitment to social-emotional learning changing in response to COVID-19 traumas? 

We got $7 million from the Wallace Foundation to implement social-emotional learning districtwide. They hired the RAND Corporation to do a research study. But we ran into a problem because we couldn’t have a treatment group and a control group. All of our campuses wanted to have that training and so we kind of threw the research out the window.

We trained the teachers first so they could help deal with the students and we also hired 58 mental health and social work professionals last year, knowing that we were going to need them this year. 
 We just went all in, as many as we could afford.

Last question, what’s sustaining you through the pandemic? Where are you finding positive stories to counterbalance all the tense circumstances?

People don’t want a whiner. They want a problem solver. So if you lose hope and aspiration, then that gives other people permission to lose hope. I’m generally a positive person, I look for solutions.

I’ve had very little pushback on my mask mandate protocol. In fact, I’ve had mostly universal support and so I think that just shows that if you’re willing to take a risk, and look to the future in a positive way that people will climb aboard with you. So far, so good.

Often, a county line or a school district border can be the difference between whether mask-wearing is required or not.

A number of cities, counties and school districts in the past week have defied Gov. ’s executive order banning mask mandates and made mask-wearing mandatory in public schools in a bid to try to prevent the highly contagious delta variant from infecting schoolchildren too young to get vaccinated — and to keep hospitals from overflowing with COVID-19 patients.

Dallas County had the most wide-ranging mask mandate in the state — covering public schools, colleges, businesses and many government buildings. In neighboring Tarrant County, the county doesn’t require mask-wearing anywhere.

Colleges in Travis County must require masks — but not two hours south in Bexar County. There, officials decided to keep the mandate just to K-12 — a move intended to give state officials challenging the order in court fewer opportunities to strike it down.

“We restricted it because we didn’t want to overreach and have another reason [for the state] to knock down our order,” Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said.

For Texans living in urban areas, another source of confusion over mask-wearing are the pingpong legal battles between Abbott and local officials. In some cases, a local mask mandate has been overturned by one court, only to be reinstated within hours by another.

For example, the Texas Supreme Court temporarily nixed mask mandates in Bexar and Dallas counties Sunday evening. Less than a day later, a lower court judge essentially reinstated the Bexar mandate for public schools — though not without acknowledging the confusion.

“I just wanted to apologize to all those parents, school administrators, the superheroes that we call teachers for what someone called the equivalent to a legal tug of war, unfortunately where our children are right in the middle,” District Judge Antonia Arteaga said in making her ruling Monday afternoon.

After the Supreme Court ruling, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins insisted in a tweet that justices “did not strike down my face mask order.”

But the court made Jenkins’ order unenforceable by removing his ability to fine businesses that don’t comply, said Doug Alexander, a lawyer representing Jenkins.

“What’s ‘cray cray’ about it is that everybody’s telling [Jenkins] he needs mask mandates to save lives in Dallas County,” Alexander said. “For reasons that I can’t fathom, the governor and the attorney general are hell-bent on tying the arms of all governmental entities from doing exactly what the physicians on the front lines are telling them they must do to stop the surging pandemic.”

Amid the legal disarray, many school districts have walked back plans to require masks.

​​Northeast Independent School District in San Antonio imposed a mask order after Bexar County officials convinced a judge to pause Abbott’s ban on mask mandates. But after Sunday’s Supreme Court ruling, the district scuttled its plans.

The same goes for Fort Bend ISD — another district that was set to require masks, but changed course in defiance of Fort Bend County Judge KP George’s mask order for the county, which includes public schools.

Some districts aren’t waiting for the state to challenge local mask orders to reverse course. In Travis County, Eanes Independent School District pulled back its mask mandate after the state Supreme Court decision — even though the decision didn’t apply to Travis County and the county mask mandate remains in effect.

“We will follow the law as it is determined by the highest court at the time in this legal chess match,” the school district posted on Twitter.

Others have stuck with their mandates through the chaos. Dallas, Austin and San Antonio ISDs will continue to require masks despite the Supreme Court order.

In parts of the state where masking orders remain untouched by the legal crossfire, officials are weighing the possibility of expanding the mandate beyond schools and colleges.

Plenty of businesses in Austin have adopted their own masking requirements without a local mandate, Austin Mayor Steve Adler said. But he hasn’t ruled out mandating masks for private businesses if the number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals continues to rise — though Adler doesn’t relish the idea.

“We’re all just trying to keep people safe and to keep the economy open,” he said.

Abbott has pushed back in recent days on the by cities, counties and school districts against his order — arguing in court that localities don’t have the authority to ignore his order and are creating undue confusion with local mandates. Texas is past the need for mask mandates, Abbott has said.

“Any confusion stems from local officials violating the governor’s executive order in their attempt to restrict the rights and freedoms of Texans,” Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze said in a statement. “Every Texan has a right to choose for themselves and their children whether they will wear masks, open their businesses, or get vaccinated.”

To Adler, it’s Abbott who’s creating the confusion.

“I think there’s huge confusion when the science and the doctors all say that we need to do everything we can to get people to mask and to get vaccinated — and our governor won’t make it happen and will stop local communities from doing what they can to make it happen,” Adler said.

Joshua Fechter and Brian Lopez are reporters , the only member-supported, digital-first, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Disclosure: Steve Adler, a former Texas Tribune board chair, has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them .

The ruling comes after several school districts and a handful of counties across the state defied Gov. ’s executive order that restricted local entities from instituting mask mandates. On Friday, the 4th Court of Appeals in San Antonio upheld a lower court ruling that permitted Bexar County to require mask-wearing in public schools. Shortly after, the 5th Court of Appeals in Dallas upheld a more far-reaching order from Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins that required masks in public schools, universities and businesses.

In a to the Texas Supreme Court, Texas Attorney General ’s office said the Texas Disaster Act of 1975 gives the governor power to act as the “commander in chief” of the state’s response to a disaster. Attorneys representing cities and counties that have sued Abbott over his executive order have argued that his orders should not supersede local orders.

“Let this ruling serve as a reminder to all ISDs and Local officials that the Governor’s order stands,” Paxton said after the ruling.

Abbott’s response to the decision was less pointed, specifying that his executive order does not prohibit mask-wearing.

“Anyone who wants to wear a masks can do so,” .

But some of the local officials who defied Abbott’s order said they’ll continue to fight.

In a statement, the city of San Antonio said the Supreme Court’s decision “has little practical effect” since a lower court’s ruling granting the city temporary permission to issue a mask mandate will expire tomorrow. The city still plans to present its case in a Bexar County district court.

“The City of San Antonio and Bexar County’s response to the Texas Supreme Court continues to emphasize that the Governor cannot use his emergency powers to suspend laws that provide local entities the needed flexibility to act in an emergency,” said City Attorney Andy Segovia.

Michael Hinojosa, superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District, announced Sunday evening that his district still plans to require masks when the school year begins for a majority of students on Monday, a Dallas ISD spokesperson said. Dallas County has a hearing Aug. 24 before a lower court that granted it permission to implement its mask mandate.

Jenkins, the county judge, that he expects the county to win in that hearing.

“We won’t stop working with parents, doctors, schools, business [and] others to protect you,” Jenkins said.

Fueled by the highly contagious delta variant, hospitalizations have increased across the state at a pace quicker than at any other point during the pandemic. Less than half of the state’s population is fully vaccinated.

Jon Taylor, a political science professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said it was “a long shot” that the state Supreme Court would go against Abbott’s executive order.

“The Supreme Court in general, particularly with a Supreme Court that is 9-0 Republican at the moment, I think it was going to be difficult to see them going against the governor for something that is viewed as his legal right to do at this point,” Taylor said.

Dale Carpenter, a law professor at Southern Methodist University, said the ruling means “the writing is on the wall” for other school districts and counties that have also approved mask requirements, and it’s likely Abbott and Paxton will repeat the same legal maneuvers they made with Dallas and Bexar counties.

Greg Casar, an Austin City Council member, that a mask requirement for Austin ISD is still in place despite the Supreme Court’s decision.

“This is about keeping our kids in school and out of the hospital,” Casar said.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden hinted last week at the possibility of the federal government intervening in states that have banned mask mandates.

Recently, the released guidance recommending universal masking for students and school staff. With children younger than 12 not yet cleared to receive the vaccine, some teachers and parents in Texas have expressed worry that not instituting mask requirements could contribute to spread of the virus .

That led some of the largest school districts in the state — Austin ISD, Dallas ISD and Houston ISD — to require masks, despite Abbott’s order.

On Friday, a judge granted temporary permission to Harris County and several other Texas school districts to implement masks requirements. A judge in Tarrant County, meanwhile, granted a temporary order preventing Fort Worth ISD from requiring masks after four parents pursued a restraining order against the district, according to the .

Allyson Waller is a reporter , the only member-supported, digital-first, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Disclosure: Southern Methodist University and the University of Texas at San Antonio have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .