Tension building up over closures
Schools staying shut despite Gov. Newsom’s desire to reopen them
Wednesday was supposed to be the day Jessica Brown’s first grader, Isaiah, would return to the classroom for the first time since the coronavirus shuttered schools across California last March.
It dawned instead with Isaiah outside a closed Berkeley elementary campus with his mother, sister and dozens of other frustrated parents and kids, scribbling out letters to school officials and even Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, who once attended district schools, urging a reopening.
Two weeks after Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a $2 billion plan to help the state’s public schools return kids to classrooms, parents are see
ing little movement toward opening the doors and patience is wearing thin, with many fearing even a fall reopening is uncertain.
“It’s a complex issue,” Brown said. “But at a certain point, people just are pulling their hair out. Enough is enough! We’ve seen solutions work in other places as well as in private schools. If they can do it, why can’t we?”
Wednesday’s demonstration was among the first in the Bay Area since Newsom announced his proposed budget Friday, devoting significant amounts of a projected $15 billion surplus toward dealing with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Los Gatos families staged a similar demonstration last week.
Though parents were grateful for Newsom’s extra support for reopening schools, they were disappointed when he said he would not mandate that districts open, preferring an “open hand” to a “closed fist” approach and providing “incentives for behavior we want to see.”
But Jamila Dunn, mother of a Berkeley first grader, said, “They’re not going to do anything without a mandate.”
The demonstration came on a day when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report adding growing evidence that schools aren’t fueling coronavirus outbreaks.
With 62% of U.S. K-12 school districts offering either fully open campuses or a “hybrid” mix of online and in-person learning, outbreaks have been “limited” and COVID-19 infections in counties where K-12 schools offer in-person education were similar to that in counties offering only online education. The agency recommended that K-12 schools be the last to close and the first to reopen because of community coronavirus transmission.
“It drives me crazy that retail stores are a priority
over education,” Brown said.
Berkeley Unified School District Superintendent Brent Stephens said the current outbreak spike that began in November put Wednesday’s planned reopening of the 10,000-student district on ice. He would not guess when kids might return to class, though he said the hope is before the end of the academic year and summer break.
“Permission to reopen is tied to a number of important metrics related to COVID19,” Stephens said. “All of those metrics are trending in the wrong direction right now, and have been for many weeks.”
The district has been in negotiations with its teachers union on terms for reopening, but the two sides remain far apart. The district wants all teachers to be prepared to teach in person except those with approved work-from-home accommodations, but teachers say that only those who volunteer should teach kids in class.
The district wants to reopen when county outbreak levels subside to the state’s second-highest red tier level, but teachers say it should wait until they drop further to the third-highest orange tier. Teachers want mandatory student COVID-19 testing, but the district says no because the state doesn’t require it as a reopening condition.
“I remind myself and the community that they are coming from a good place and have very legitimate reasons, especially in this frightening spike, to be very concerned about health and safety,” Stephens said. And although Newsom’s latest plan would allow the district to reopen schools even with outbreaks at the highest purple tier level, Berkeley isn’t contemplating that.
Berkeley Federation of Teachers President Matt Meyer said, “Teachers want to work in person with our students when it is safe” and negotiations continue.
“We are still in discussions with the district on how to equitably serve all our students in two distinct models with the same staffing and resources,” Meyer said. “We’ve been told not to gather with anyone outside our households, but teachers are asked to prepare to host students from a dozen different families. We are told to assume that anyone can transmit the virus due to the prevalence of asymptomatic transmission, but then are asked to accept that the advice doesn’t apply to students.”
Though a couple dozen parents and kids gathered in protest Wednesday, they acknowledged others are less eager to send their kids back. Stephens said that in a December survey, parents were split, with about 40% for a return to classrooms, 40% for continuing online learning for now and 20% unsure.
But though public schools, teachers and their unions remain popular in California, and especially in progressive Berkeley, that loyalty is being tested as never before. Dunn said she has voted for every school bond and supported every teacher raise. But the ongoing school closures feel like a betrayal.
She’s contemplating moving in with her parents in Hawaii, where at least a hybrid instruction plan is offered, and is reconsidering reform ideas like school vouchers that let parents spend public money on private schools, as advocated by President Donald Trump’s former education secretary, Betsy DeVos.
“I was never a fan of Betsy DeVos and the voucher system,” Dunn said, “but it’s looking pretty good now.”