San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
SOME PARENTS LAMENT SCHOOL CLOSURE ORDER
Even those who agree frustrated at prospect of distance learning
Molly Dimon, a parent of an 11-year-old daughter with autism, was counting on schools reopening this fall.
Her daughter used to receive speech and occupational therapy, and had a special education teacher and a personal aide at her school before it closed due to the coronavirus.
Without school, she says, her daughter hasn’t been learning. She has refused to watch Zoom sessions, has meltdowns that can last as long as four hours, and has lost the ability to sit still and focus on a task, Dimon said.
On Friday, the Camp Pendleton mother learned it will be an untold number of weeks or months before her daughter’s school is allowed to reopen.
When Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that schools in most of the state’s counties, in
cluding San Diego, won’t be allowed to reopen until their COVID-19 cases drop, Dimon was frustrated, even though she understands why Newsom gave the order. The state is in the middle of a coronavirus surge that is not showing signs of slowing, and on Friday, San Diego County reached a single-day record for the number of COVID-19 cases reported.
Public and private schools in counties on the state’s COVID-19 watch list, which includes San Diego, will only be allowed to reopen once the county is off the watch list and remains so for 14 consecutive days. Those counties will have to meet certain criteria to be removed from the list, including lowering the number of cases per 100,000 people.
Until San Diego County reaches that point — and schools reopen — Dimon said her daughter will continue to regress, and that may set her back for the rest of her life.
“This literally could be affecting her entire life, not just a year,” Dimon said. “It’s so frustrating that we have absolutely no say in the matter.”
Many of the state officials and school district leaders who are pushing for schools to remain closed won’t dispute that school closures are harming students, not just in academics but in mental health.
But those officials say students and staff shouldn’t come back to school until it is safe to do so.
“We know that students should be back in school, and as long as students are out of school, even with the best online learning program, we’re going to see learning loss; we’re going to see social and emotional issues build with our students,” San Diego Unified School Board Vice President Richard Barrera said in an interview Thursday. “What we’re trying to do is get our students back to school as soon as we can, provided that it’s safe to do so.”
Newsom’s announcement on Friday drew praise from the state superintendent of schools, teachers and school staff unions, the state parent teacher association and the California School Boards Association, all of which said it provided clarity on when it will be considered safe for schools to reopen.
The announcement specified rules for schools when they do reopen, including masks for all students in grades 3 and up, regular COVID-19 testing for school staff, and re-closures of classrooms and schools when someone on campus tests positive. San Diego County currently requires masks for everyone ages 2 and up.
San Diego Unified and some other large school districts in the county, including Sweetwater Union High, Chula Vista Elementary and Escondido Union High, were already planning to start the school year with online learning only.
But many other districts were planning to reopen next month despite the coronavirus surge. Leaders of those districts said they were following the wishes of parents who want in-person classes, and said they were prepared to deploy sufficient safety measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus on campus.
Some districts, such as Cajon Valley Union and Poway Unified, were already holding on-campus summer programs for students.
“What @Cagovernor Newsome is doing is Child abuse and a massive abuse of power,” Cajon Valley Union Superintendent David Miyashiro tweeted Saturday. “We will fight this @Cajonvalleyusd Punishing everyone because the two largest districts in Ca failed to plan and prepare to safely reopen school is cowardly.”
Poway Unified said it is still hopeful it can physically reopen for the start of the school year.
“I want to reiterate our commitment to honor many of our families’ wishes to reopen our schools if possible, as well as allow our families the ability to choose from two main options: on campus or fully virtual learning,” Poway Unified Superintendent Marian Kim Phelps wrote to families on Friday. “As such, Poway Unified is still committed to physically reopening our schools for our students, but only when it is safer to do so.”
Poway Unified is considering pushing its start date back two weeks to Sept. 2 in the hopes that the county’s COVID-19 numbers will improve enough to reopen by then. If that isn’t the case, Poway Unified may start the school year with online learning only, Phelps said.
Even if San Diego County is removed from the state’s watch list, it’s unclear how soon all school districts would choose to reopen.
For Chula Vista Elementary in South County, where COVID-19 rates are among the highest in the county, the district is considering staying closed until the county’s test-positive rate reaches 4 percent, when it would reopen for part-time school attendance. The district is considering not reopening for full-time attendance until the test-positive rate reaches 1 percent, said Superintendent Francisco Escobedo. The county’s current rate is about 7 percent.
“Until those rates go down and the curve begins to go down as well, we won’t open schools,” Escobedo said in an interview last week.
In the meantime, the district is considering offering free child care for families who need it, Escobedo said.
Darlene Lee, a parent in the Del Mar Union School District, said she was looking forward to having her 6year-old son back in school.
Distance learning in the spring was already challenging, she said. Lee spent four to five hours a day homeschooling her son on top of working full-time in account management and caring for her 3-year-old son. She didn’t have time to homeschool her preschooler.
Lee said she feels like she and other school families are being punished for the actions of young adults who have been going out to bars and partying during holiday weekends. People between the ages of 20 and 29 account for more COVID-19 cases than any other age group in the county.
She also said the state’s order lumps all ZIP codes in a county together and doesn’t allow local school district leaders to decide whether it’s safe to reopen in their particular area. In Carmel Valley, where she lives, the case rate is 27.9 per 100,000 people, compared with the county average of 147.2.
“We’re painting with a broad brush,” Lee said. “I get it, we have to get this under control, but how do we move the needle with a group I don’t have any control over anyway?”
As for Dimon, she wonders when her daughter will be able to get the many hours of special education services she has been missing the past few months. She also wonders when her 10year-old son will be back home; she had taken him to Oregon to live with her parents to give him some respite from the chaos at home.
“We’re just going to keep surviving and keep doing what we’re doing here, even though it’s not really working,” Dimon said.