S.F. schools: Equipment, staff insufficient to get all students back Aug. 17

It looks increasingly likely that few if any San Francisco students will be back fulltime in classrooms this fall, but families won’t know for sure until the end of July, less than three weeks before the first day of school.

Reopening to all students will be virtually impossible by Aug. 17, given staffing and facilities challenges as well as shortfalls in funding to hire the necessary custodians and nurses and in critical supplies like soap and hand sanitizer, according to administrators and community members involved in the planning process.

San Francisco health officials have yet to release the public health guidelines for reopening, which will identify the conditions required to bring students back into school buildings. Other counties, including Santa Clara and Marin, have released theirs.

San Francisco appears well behind many of its district counterparts statewide in coming up with a plan.

Administrators just started polling parents about their concerns this week, a process that won’t be completed until July 24, yet the school board is expected to make a final decision on whether or how to reopen just four days after that. That uncertainty is difficult for parents, eager to know if they can return to work and whether their kids will have the structure and academic support that many felt was missing during distance learning.

Alida Fisher, a parent of three city students and a community member on the district’s logistics committee, said based on current conditions, there is no way that all students will be back in class in mid-August. The logistics committee, composed of district staff and community members, was charged with providing guidance on transportation, meals, cleaning and other issues to the school board.

“It’s an impossible task. It’s a herculean task,” she said. “I just don’t think we’ve got the human capital and the human capacity to do it.”

For months, district officials in San Francisco and across the state have been grappling with how and when to reopen schools, decisions that depend on local COVID19 case counts, finances and available space in schools to socially distance, among myriad factors.

The state passed a bill recently requiring schools to do at least some inperson learning if local health officials allow it and if schools can meet the necessary criteria to do so.

But increasingly, and despite spikes in positive cases across the country, health officials, politicians and parents have been urging schools to reopen to alleviate the burden on families and the economy.

President Trump also weighed in on the issue Monday, tweeting in all caps, “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!”

Yet opening — or not — will be a local decision, one made by each district’s leadership, with guidance from state and local health officials.

Some districts, including several in Marin County, currently expect to reopen fully to students with health measures in place, while others say they expect to start the school year with distance learning or do a combination, rotating students between virtual and inperson classrooms on alternate days or mornings and afternoons. Many districts are still in the process of formulating a plan. Oakland families should know more about the district’s reopening on Friday.

But San Francisco arguably has more hurdles to clear before reopening to students, including a $20 million budget shortfall, transportation issues, facilities issues and a lack of safety supplies.

Many city students and staff, for example, take Muni to schools, yet the transportation agency said last week that it expects to cut 40 of its 68 lines for at least the near future because of the pandemic.

“If we do reopen, how do we get kids to school?” asked Fisher. “There are so many factors outside our control.”

For example, there are 7.8 million square feet of space in district schools, but only enough custodians to clean 3.2 million square feet each day, Fisher said.

Hiring enough custodians to clean schools, not to mention enough nurses to monitor students, will be difficult to impossible without additional funding. Yet school officials don’t know if help will be coming from the federal government, given coronavirus relief funds are on hold in Congress.

“The logistics around this are mindboggling,” said school board President Mark Sanchez.

Sanchez said his best guess right now is that the district will partially reopen to students in August, focusing on those with the most needs, including those in special education programs, foster youth, English learners, those in public housing, and perhaps preschoolers and kindergartners.

Then, within a month or two, it will phase in more students to inperson learning, which would require configuring classrooms with desks 6 feet apart, or with about 12 students.

But the todo list before that happens is long. Take facilities, he said.

“One of the barriers we have is ventilation,” he said, referring to health advisories urging access to outside air to reduce transmission. “We have entire buildings where the windows don’t open.”

The list of factors involved in a final decision is seemingly endless, district officials said. How many teachers, for example, can’t do inperson learning because of their age or health issues? Will there be enough substitutes? Can the first day of school move into September?

“We’re looking at all this,” Superintendent Vince Matthews said in a virtual town hall meeting Tuesday.

The district is also looking at what health and safety supplies are on its shelves. Currently, it doesn’t have enough reusable masks, gloves, hand sanitizer, disinfectant, wipes, hand soap or thermometers.

Even if the district can overcome logistical challenges, it’s unclear how the spiking case count could affect schools reopening in counties across California.

San Francisco health reopening guidelines coming out Wednesday will include the most recent and best science, which shows children are less likely to get or transmit the coronavirus. That means the biggest concern in reopening schools is adult transmission of the virus rather than exposure to or from students, Jeanne Lee, physician specialist at the San

Francisco Department of Health, said during the town hall.

The question is whether schools can be made as safe if not safer than a trip to the store, she said.

“Can we reduce the risk in schools to less than the staff see when they go out into the community?” Lee asked. “I think that’s reasonable.”

The guidelines will recommend keeping staff and students 6 feet apart, although physical distancing among younger students can be relaxed, she said. Masks are key to preventing transmission.

But the onus, Lee said, will fall on the adults, not the children.

“The riskiest thing we can do at work is to eat lunch with a colleague,” she said. “This is how staff get exposed.”

The superintendent said he hopes to have an update for the board on Tuesday in terms of what direction or scenarios are most likely, with a detailed plan on July 28.

While the district only recently sent out the parent survey and just launched working groups, officials said they have been gathering data and working on reopening for months.

Sanchez said he’s been hearing from a lot of parents. They want schools open.

At least for the time being, his message to them: “Prepare for the possibility of distance learning.”