Date chosen for junior high, high school students in Modesto to return. Here’s the plan
Seventh- and eighth-graders will return to Modesto City Schools classrooms starting Jan. 19 if Stanislaus County has been in the red tier on the state’s COVID-19 monitoring list for two consecutive weeks.
That plan was approved Monday night by the Board of Education, which followed staff recommendation. Only trustee Amy Elliott Neumann voted against it, after saying she would rather open secondary grades once the county reaches the better orange tier.
The orange tier means the risk of virus transmission is considered moderate, while the red tier means there’s substantial risk. Stanislaus County on Tuesday was returned to the purple, or “widespread risk,” tier. But county officials said the state made the move in error and they were working with the Department of Public Health to rectify it.
The “7-12 Safe Schools Reopening Plan” passed Monday night will return high school students to campuses two weeks after grades seven and eight if Stanislaus County has continued in the red tier or better.
The 7-12 learning model is similar to that for elementary grades, whose students return to schools beginning Thursday.
Students are divided into groups A and B, with group A on campus Mondays and Tuesdays and group B on Thursdays and Fridays.
While one group is in the classroom, the teacher is instructing both it and the group watching and listening from home. On Wednesdays, both groups do distance learning.
District staff told the board that preparing teachers for that concurrent instruction will be a challenge. “Really focusing on where teachers are at now, there’s a great deal of training, professional development and support that needs to be laid out for our teachers to get to that level,” Associate Superintendent Brad Goudeau said. “And I think that’s that’s a primary focus right now moving forward.”
Much of the 7-12 prevention effort also is like that for lower grades: all sites cleaned thoroughly daily, a deep cleaning on Wednesdays, high-efficiency air filter installation, requirement of face coverings and hand sanitizing, and more.
Social distancing is a big challenge
A key difference between primary and secondary instruction is keeping the students socially distanced. It’s pretty straightforward to keep elementary kids in small, stable cohorts during the day, but not in the older grades, where they move from classroom to classroom.
Simply dividing the student population — half the ninth-graders on campus at once, half the 10th-graders, and so on — cannot ensure class sizes throughout the day will be half their size because not all students take the same courses.
“As soon as students go to the next period, then that math doesn’t necessarily apply,” Goudeau explained at the meeting. “... We are working with a number of districts that have already engaged in reopening schools, and I’ve identified some strategies to help mitigate those higher numbers that might show up in a class period.”
But in the interest of being transparent, he said, the district cannot guarantee six-foot social distancing in every period in every class. “That is going to be a challenge that I don’t think that we can meet. It’s just a function of the master scheduling and mathematics.”
So to reach the best possible level of health and safety will mean a strong focus on protocols such as mask wearing and sanitization practices between periods, Goudeau said.
District ‘in decent shape’ with supplies
Trustee Chad Brown asked staff to elaborate on the procurement of supplies necessary to reopen, noting that school districts nationwide are trying to get the same things and are competing with businesses as well.
Associate Superintendent Tim Zearley answered that the district has been working for months in preparation for this week’s TK-6 reopening, so is well stocked with supplies. But staff also is continuously ordering ahead of schedule so will be receiving shipments throughout the next several months.
He elaborated that the district is in “decent shape” depending on the product in question. The biggest struggle of late has been obtaining disinfecting wipes in the quantity needed to do cleaning of each classroom between each period. But the district has found a vendor who can deliver wipes in time to bring back the 7-12 students, he said.
Other supply challenges are due to a combination of factors, including trucking and materials shortages, Zearley said. For example, the district needs hundreds of large-screen TVs for classrooms. Though the TVs are available, “we’re finding delays in just having available trucking companies to deliver the orders for us,” he said.
The same is true for high-efficiency air filters for heating and air-conditioning systems, he added. That problem has been compounded by a nationwide shortage of the fabric needed to make the MERV-13 (Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value) filters the district is switching to.
The district began ordering filters in August and got its first delivery just last week, Zearley said. Speaking of supplies overall, he added, “with advanced planning, and getting our orders now perpetually into the system, we’re finding it easier to meet those demands.”
Earlier return for at-risk students?
School board student representative Carson Carranza, a senior at Modesto High, expressed concern about a later return of students to high schools than had been discussed at a previous board meeting.
Noting the district’s stated goal of college and career readiness for students, he said he’s worried about many of his peers. At his school alone, the number of failing grades has doubled from first quarter 2019 to first quarter 2020, he said. (Figures from the district across high schools were not immediately available Tuesday morning.)
“What would the possibility be of having some of the struggling students who are not earning passing grades return to campus before some of the students who are able to cope with distance learning better?” he asked staff.
The district does have a number of so-called learning hubs at the secondary schools, and the high schools continue to open more and more, Associate Superintendent Mark Herbst answered.
“That hub basically is designed to have some level of adult supervision and assistance for the children that are struggling,” he said. “And so while it may not be ideal, and I appreciate you bringing up the point, it’s definitely an intervention for some of our more at-risk kids.”
Tie return to better community numbers
Neumann said she supported bringing back seventh- and eighth-graders in January as staff recommended, but the return of high schoolers should not be simply two weeks later if the county remains in the red. The opening of high schools should be pegged to the community bringing down the COVID-19 numbers, she said, proposing that it not occur until Stanislaus is in the orange tier at least a week.
The district’s high schools are much larger than its junior highs. “We’re talking over 2,000 students,” she said, while the largest middle school is under 800.
Fellow trustee John Ervin III said Neumann made a good point but conversations with students struggling with distance learning lead him to believe that bringing them back to classrooms at least a couple of days a week is the better scenario for them. Students will need to be trusted to adhere to guidelines set in place by the schools and to stick with good practices on their own time, too, he said.
Board Vice President Charlene West agreed that a lot of trust will be placed in students and their families. She said she’s more worried about the harm of keeping them out of school than returning them. “I worry about kids dropping out of school, because there are a lot of students who just can’t engage in the distance learning,” West said.
Timeline will be difficult to keep
With Stanislaus County’s numbers rising now, even without cold and flu season in full swing, and with holiday celebrations ahead, it may be tough to meet the timeline to bring back students in January, Brown said. “So I have a hard time pushing it to another tier level (the orange) when it’s going to be difficult for us to reach that red level and be able to open. I want to put our trust in students and really engage them in the responsibility part of this equation.”
Trustee Adolfo Lopez agreed that the January return might not be realistic looking at county numbers right now and anticipating what the colder months will bring.
And he like other trustees said the responsibility for improving conditions lies with the community. “The decisions that we make here today are only a fraction of the decisions that allow us to get back to school,” Lopez said.
Apparently indicating the politicization of COVID-19 prevention measures, he said, “We need to put our differences aside and make sure that we’re putting our masks on, we’re taking our precautions for the ability to come back.”
This story was originally published November 10, 2020 at 1:44 PM.
