Sylvan Union board votes to return fourth-to-eighth graders in March
The Sylvan Union School District Board of Education received an update Tuesday night on efforts to bring fourth- through eighth-grade students back to campuses for in-person learning.
The plan is to have fourth- and fifth-graders return to classrooms for the third trimester, which starts March 1. Students would be split into two groups, with Cohort A in classrooms for full days Monday and Tuesday and Cohort B in class Thursdays and Fridays. Both groups will continue distance learning on Wednesdays.
Of the northeast Modesto district’s fourth- and fifth-grade families, 55% have chosen to return to in-person instruction and 45% will continue with 100% distance learning.
Tuesday night, Superintendent Eric Fredrickson first reminded trustees that since November, full-day, in-person learning has been offered five days a week to students in third grade and lower.
About two-thirds of the families with transitional-kindergarten through third-grade children have chosen in-person learning, with the rest opting for distance learning, he said.
Sylvan’s TK-3 classrooms opened under a COVID-19 pandemic waiver approved by county and state health officials. The plan in the fall was to phase in fourth through sixth grades as the ability to physically distance permitted. Sylvan has about 6,000 TK-6 students.
In December, due to a significant increase in COVID-19 cases in Stanislaus, the county health officer “for good reason” put on hold Sylvan’s return of fourth- and fifth-graders, Fredrickson said.
‘Still not eligible’ to bring back grade six
“At this point because things are declining, the public health officer allowed us to continue our reopening for four and five,” he told trustees. “Remember, grade six is at a middle school, and the guidance indicates that if you had not started reopening at a specific school site, you could not reopen at that site until it was under 25 per 100,000.”
Under the state’s current rules, elementary schools can reopen when the seven-day average of new infections in a county falls below 25 daily cases per 100,000 residents. All students in grades seven through 12 can return to in-person classes when the case rate falls to seven cases or fewer per 100,000.
“I believe we’re hitting below 25 (as of Tuesday, the state put Stanislaus at 21.4 cases per 100,000), ... but it has to be for five consecutive days,” Fredrickson said. “So again, we were not eligible and still are not currently eligible to bring sixth grade back.”
A district task force on reopening sixth through eighth grades is working to create a schedule that meets California Department of Public Health guidance, the superintendent said. It’s a greater challenge than a TK-5 schedule because the middle schools have more students and a more complex master schedule, which includes honors programs, electives and rotating students from classroom to classroom over seven periods, he said.
“It may require a different learning model platform, we’re still working through that, trying to figure that out,” Fredrickson said. “Again, it’s not dragging our heels, it’s not making excuses. It is a great deal of work that we want to do a good job with.”
But “excuse” is a word some frustrated parents are using. Joni Griepp, whose children attend Sanders Elementary and Savage Middle schools, submitted a comment read at the start of Tuesday’s meeting.
What exactly does ‘guidance’ mean?
“We’ve been told our county must meet the red tier requirements” to open grades 7-12, she said. “What if we never get to the red tier? What then?” She also expressed doubt that the state would cut off funding or shut down campuses.
She later added, referring to state and local health guidance on school reopening, “Isn’t a guideline a general rule, principle or piece of advice? By very definition, a guideline is not enforceable by law. The excuse that the guidelines are too strict for middle schools to open is unacceptable.”
Griepp is among the organizers of a Sylvan student sit-out protest planned for Friday. A digital flyer for the protest urges families of all district students to keep their learning devices off that day. “Please call your school and let them know you are sitting out in support of every 6th, 7th & 8th grade student,” it says.
A letter from a student to the board also made a case for getting students back in classrooms. The student, named Avery, first wrote of the academic difficulty of distance learning, then turned to social-emotional challenges.
“Almost all of my friends are from school, which meant I would see them every day. Now I have seen them not even once, and we aren’t even as close as we used to be. ... All of my socialization is gone due to this,” she said.
“I also lost the chance to make new friends this year because everyone has their camera off, which I can’t blame them for doing. I don’t even know what more than half of my classmates look like.”
During board discussion after Fredrickson’s presentation, trustee Cynthia Lindsey returned to the topic of state and county guidance. “My understanding is that guidance is a law, we have to follow that rule, and there’s not any wavering from it.”
She asked the superintendent if her understanding is correct, and he agreed. The state Department of Public Health sets the requirements and made clear in January that they supersede local public health, Fredrickson said.
“Prior to that, they were giving more discretion to local public health,” he said, “but in this new document, it was clearly stated that they are the last word” on requirements for public schools to operate.
The superintendent’s slide presentation to the board is an attachment in the board meeting agenda at bit.ly/2NFnUnf.
This story was originally published February 24, 2021 at 2:28 PM.
