‘Do everything you can’: Turlock school district gives board its draft reopening plan
A draft of the “Safe Schools Re-Opening Plan” for in-person transitional-kindergarten through sixth-grade education during the COVID-19 pandemic was presented to the Turlock Unified School District Board of Trustees on Tuesday night. And after hearing from community members (including a student), school workers and board members, Superintendent Dana Trevethan summed up the conversation with, “I’m sensing not a great deal of confidence, strictly not in the work that we’ve done, but more in the environment that we continue to live within.”
Stanislaus, along with the majority of the 58 California counties, remains in the “purple tier,” the lowest in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s grading system that will go toward measuring the ability to begin fully reopening schools and businesses.
Board member Miranda Chalabi noted that many residents aren’t embracing the basic safety precautions needed to reduce the infection rate. While she was on a recent trip into San Francisco, “every single person on the street outside was wearing a mask,” she said. Even sitting outside bars and restaurants, they would pull aside their masks to take bites or sips, then immediately put them back on. “But if you’ve driven around Turlock or Modesto, you’re not going to see that,” Chalabi said. “So this goes back to the community.”
Turlock High senior Isaiah Aguilar said during the public comment period at the start of the meeting that it’s important to realize schools aren’t closed solely to protect students from falling ill from COVID-19 but to keep them from transmitting the virus to others. “We have to prioritize the well-being of our community and students, which TUSD has been doing,” he said. Aguilar later added, “To the people in favor of reopening schools, there’s one thing I ask of you: Social distance, wear your mask and do everything you can to meet the state criteria so that we can open up.”
But there is fault on TUSD’s part, too, Turlock Teachers Association president Christine Rowell told the board and district staff. Members of her union, the California School Employees Association and other represented groups are “unnecessarily busy,” she said, doing not only their jobs “but because we’re doing your job, too.”
Employees are busy reading every update from the governor’s office, the state departments of education and public health and county offices because they no longer trust the district to provide fair and truthful information, Rowell said. “We are busy trying to help fix broken situations that TUSD caused by promising parents more than can be delivered.”
The 36-page draft plan taken to the board Tuesday night addresses the spectrum of work necessary to safely reopen schools to younger learners. Among them: cleaning and disinfection; learning in small, stable cohorts; physical distancing, including while entering, exiting and moving around school campuses; face coverings and other PPE; health screenings for students and staff; testing of students and staff; contact tracing; staff training and family education; and the triggers for returning to distance learning.
All classrooms now have mounted dispensers of hand sanitizer, and most elementary classrooms have sinks, said Assistant Superintendent Heidi Lawler, who made the presentation to the board.
Each school’s custodial staff has been given the products, tools and training to do enhanced disinfection at schools and district facilities, she said, and a new short-term position of sanitation helper has been created.
Temperature checks of students and staff will not be required, the draft says, but when done, no-contact thermometers will be used.
Staff and students should be screened at home daily before arriving at school, it says, but alternatively, it can be done on site via self-reporting, visual inspection or a questionnaire.
A call for on-campus temperature checks
Trustee Frank Lima said he wants temperature checks at schools because he fears they won’t get done at home for many kids. “Look at the number of students that receive free lunches, and we’re delivering lunches to students out in the community,” he said. For any number of reasons, their families aren’t able to sufficiently nourish them, he said, “ and “if they don’t have the means provide that nutrition ... I don’t know how they have the means to test and prepare these kids for school every day.”
By relying on home testing, he predicted the district could open schools and have to shut them again within a few weeks because there would be a spike in positive cases.
Trustee Mary Jackson agreed that for the safety of kids and adults, student temperature checks should be done at schools. It’s not a responsibility that realistically can be put on parents because, for one thing, it’s still hard to find touchless thermometers in stores.
Regarding testing of children and staff, the plan encourages that all employees get a monthly test, which is “widely available at testing sites and through healthcare providers throughout the community.”
It says students should be tested ASAP if they develop any COVID-19 symptoms or have close contact with someone who has tested positive.
Lima said testing employees once a month is inadequate, but he also noted that so is testing capacity in the county, and that the typical wait time for results also is. “I absolutely want us to open, and we need to open,” especially for the most vulnerable who are not doing well with distance learning, he said “... But I’m not comfortable doing it if we run an extremely high risk of infection and people getting sick.”
Testing is the ‘really big missing hole’
Board President Lori Carlson agreed that testing “feels like the really big missing hole in this,” and that testing on a much more widespread basis than appears available to the district seems to be the best way to prevent outbreaks.
Chalabi observed that a lot of districts around the state aren’t even applying for waivers right now because cold and flu season is approaching. And she said that while waivers might work for very small districts, for one Turlock’s size, “it’s false hope.”
Superintendent Trevethan reiterated that the plan is a an evolving document, and that input still is being sought from employees and families. A survey will be sent to parents, and a virtual forum on TK-6 reopening will be held Sept. 21 from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.
With that understanding, she recommended to the board that the reopening plan be brought back as an information and action item at its Oct. 6 meeting. Submitting the plan to the county and state doesn’t bind the district to any time line to reopen schools, she said, but “when the board is agreeable and feels safe and comfortable reopening our schools in some capacity, that plan is ready to go and it’s in place.”
At that same meeting, district staff also should be able to bring to the trustees some plans for creating learning cohorts for the most vulnerable students, she said.
This story was originally published September 16, 2020 at 1:24 PM.
