Stanislaus districts respond to Newsom’s ‘disingenuous’ comments about school reopenings
The greatest obstacle to fully reopening classrooms isn’t staff and facilities being ready but “the mental conditioning that has occurred over the past year,” Patterson Joint Unified School District Superintendent Philip Alfano said Thursday in response to Gov. Gavin Newsom saying a day earlier that schools should prepare for “full, in-person instruction” this fall.
Despite the statistics and scientific evidence, some parents and students remain fearful of children returning to campuses, Alfano told The Bee via email. “One parent told me that she did not want to send her children back to school because she has elderly parents living at home (even though the parents had already been fully vaccinated),” he said. “Yesterday, one of our principals told me that she has a younger elementary student who is still at home and afraid to come back to school because she thinks she’ll get COVID and spread it to her pet bunny.
“We’re hearing stories like this but also have parents who work full time and have set up day care routines under distance learning. They are waiting for us to come back at full capacity with after-school programs in place before they can send their children back. It’s a complex issue.”
Patterson Joint Unified was among a few Stanislaus County school districts to respond to The Bee’s request for comment on Newsom’s announcement this week and their plans for the next school year.
Alfano said it was ironic and “disingenuous” for the governor to blame local decision making for delays in school reopenings. Until a San Diego lawsuit resulted in a temporary restraining order on California Department of Public Health guidance on secondary education, California was one of only three states that still had a statewide policy in place that prevented schools from reopening, he said.
The metrics established by California were more restrictive than Centers for Disease Control guidelines and what most other states were doing, Alfano said. “Shutting down schools in March 2020 was absolutely the right decision to make at the time,” the superintendent said. “However, by May 2020, we already had a wealth of international research showing that schools could remain open with reasonable safety measures in place. Children are not the ‘superspreaders’ we’d feared, and schools are not nursing homes.”
The Patterson district now has nearly three-fourths of its elementary students attending hybrid in-person instruction and just over half of its middle and high school students doing the same.
The district plans to bring back TK-5 full-day instruction on May 3 and soon merge the grade 6-12 learning cohorts, Alfano said. “We delayed the start of the school year until after Labor Day so that our students would hopefully have more time for in-person instruction. Our last day of school is not until June 17.”
Looking at the upcoming academic year, the superintendent said it’s going to be important for school districts to get firm commitments from parents on whether or not they intend to return their children to campuses.
Roughly 90% of school district budgets are tied to personnel, so figures on in-person vs. online attendance are needed to staff accordingly, Alfano said. “Based on several parent surveys we’ve conducted, we fully anticipate there will be an ongoing need to provide distance learning for 10%-15% of our students at least through the fall. To relieve our teachers of the cumbersome task of trying to do both types of instruction simultaneously, we are hiring additional staff for our Open Valley (independent study) school to administer distance learning programming for these families.”
Modesto to boost campus numbers
Modesto City Schools last month expanded in-person learning for elementary students to four days a week, and on April 26 will do the same for secondary students.
Junior high and high school sites will merge cohorts A and B to allow students to attend school in person all days but Wednesdays, which will remain distance learning only, district spokeswoman Krista Noonan said Thursday.
Families will continue to have the option to keep their students in 100% distance learning, she said.
As for the coming school year, which begins Aug. 9, Modesto City Schools intends to bring students back five days a week while still adhering to health and safety protocols, Noonan said.
She said the district anticipates a requirement by the state Department of Education for a continued distance-learning choice for parents who want to keep their students at home. “However, any type of remote option for the next school year would be 100% virtual, as opposed to our educators teaching concurrently to online and in-person students, as is current practice.”
Excluding students in the Modesto Virtual Academy independent study program, in-person attendance by secondary students on the hybrid schedule is about 53%, according to recent district figures.
Turlock students back full time
Resuming the school year after spring break, Turlock Unified School District already has students back “full time to conclude the school year in a more traditional environment,” Superintendent Dana Salles Trevethan wrote Monday on the district’s website and Facebook page. All TUSD students who wished to return to in-person learning on a pre-pandemic bell schedule have been able to do so, she said.
“Looking forward to the 2021-22 school year, we are planning for a traditional return and virtual learning opportunities that align to state and county expectations,” the superintendent’s message reads. “Priority will be provided to students with unique needs as we work to accommodate our TUSD families and community.”
In the Ceres Unified district, elementary school students returned to full-time in-person instruction this week, while secondary students remain on a hybrid schedule with two days on on-campus learning.
“Our data reflects that the district’s protocols and procedures for limiting school-based spread of COVID-19 are working,” spokeswoman Beth Parker Jimenez said. “This is encouraging news as we plan for the 2021-22 school year, which will be in-person full time unless public health guidance reverses to require otherwise.
“We are planning to continue our independent learning option into next year based on anticipated parent demand.”
Just under 6 percent of TK-6 students (410 of 6,972 enrolled) have remained on full distance learning, Jimenez said Thursday. Exact numbers for secondary students were not immediately available, but she said the percentage of those students remaining at home “should be in the 5% range.”
And in the Hughson Unified district, all students who wished to were able to return to school five days a week on Monday, Superintendent Brenda Smith said. “We had been on a hybrid schedule since the beginning of November. For the 2021-22 school year, we are planning for a traditional start on our normal bell schedule.
“We are looking into a distance learning option for families who need that, but it will likely be a different format than was offered this year.”
This story was originally published April 16, 2021 at 4:00 AM.
