By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The limb on which I will climb may be about to splinter and break, but I’ll venture out there anyway.

Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Michael Hinojosa, in issuing his mask-wearing order for all students, teachers, staff and visitors to the public school system, is playing a sound political hand.

He is defying an order from Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott that prohibits local officials such as Hinojosa from issuing such directives. Hinojosa appears to be ignoring that edict from Austin, even though we are fighting a surge in infections from the Delta variant spawned by that damn pandemic.

Why? Because the voting constituency he serves — the parents of the students and the teachers who work in DISD — are likely to oppose Gov. Abbott’s ham-handed approach to telling school districts what they can and cannot do.

Were the superintendent in charge of a district parked in the middle of a rock-ribbed Republican-leaning county, such as, oh, Collin County (where I live), he might not have the guts to do what he did today in issuing the order in a district that sits primarily inside Dallas County (which by the way voted overwhelmingly for President Biden in the 2020 presidential election); Dallas County also voted by large margins for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.

Do you get my drift here?

Thus, it is with sadness that I will probably have to wait forever for other school district chieftains to follow Superintendent Hinojosa’s lead in demonstrating courage in our national fight against the COVID pandemic.