Funds may not hurry school reopenings
SACRAMENTO — California schools are set to receive $15 billion in the latest federal coronavirus stimulus package, a windfall that the Biden administration hopes will help bring students back into classrooms and catch them up on the learning they lost during a year of largely remote instruction amid the pandemic.
But for communities that have yet to come up with a plan to resume inperson instruction this school year, it is unlikely to make a difference. In many places, the major hurdle to reopening schools before fall — or even then — remains disagreement with employee unions over what level of local transmission of the coronavirus is safe for their return.
The education funding in the $1.9 trillion
stimulus package mostly will go directly to school districts, giving them additional resources to implement social distancing measures, buy personal protective equipment and install better ventilation to reduce the spread of the virus. The bill is expected to win final congressional approval Wednesday and go to President Biden for his signature.
“With this latest infusion of resources by the Biden administration, money is not going to be the problem for school districts looking to reopen,” said Kevin Gordon, president of Capitol Advisors Group, a lobbying firm that works with many of the state’s school districts. “The challenge will be the degree to which employees are willing to come back fulltime this summer and this fall.”
Even as the state has prioritized educators for vaccines, the debate is being driven by a “fear of the unknown,” Gordon added. “It will be very perplexing if these resources are not enough to make people feel very safe.”
The federal stimulus could provide around $112 million to the San Francisco Unified School District and $137 million to the Oakland Unified School District, according to estimates prepared in February by the Congressional Research Service. The final amount may be slightly lower after lastminute amendments to the bill in the Senate redirected nearly 5% of proposed funding to private schools and special education.
More than a fifth of the money is set aside to address learn
ing loss. But districts have broad flexibility on how they use the rest to offset the challenges of the pandemic, from buying technology needed for hybrid learning to extending the school year.
Claudia Briggs, a spokesperson for the California Teachers Association, said members of the state’s largest teachers union would like districts to use the money to hire more nurses, custodians and bus drivers to account for the health risks of the virus. The union believes tutoring, expanded summer school and longer school days should all be considered to deal with learning loss, she said.
“If it means working in creative ways with the district to come up with programs that help students and it’s all agreed upon at the local level, educators are willing to do what it takes,” Briggs said.
But even the billions of dollars from the federal government cannot guarantee that all California students will be back in the classroom fulltime in the fall. State efforts have focused so far on resuming inperson instruction this spring for elementary grades and the most vulnerable students, such as English language learners and foster youth.
“It’s all going to depend on
the infection rates and what these variants do,” Briggs said.
The federal money comes on top of $6.6 billion that state leaders approved last week to accelerate school reopenings. About $4.6 billion of the funding is intended for programs over the next 18 months to make up for learning loss, and $2 billion is available to districts that bring at least some students back for inperson instruction by the end of the month.
Because the state law only encourages reopening rather than mandating it, legislators acknowledged the financial enticement might not be enough for districts where families have been reluctant to send their children back to the classroom or where administrators and employee unions have been unable to resolve their differences over safety measures.
San Francisco is weighing a plan that could bring back elementary students, special education classes and other vulnerable groups by the end of April.
Troy Flint, a spokesperson for the California School Boards Association, said the availability of vaccines for school staff, along with the receding community spread of the virus, has had a much bigger impact on recent reopenings than any legislation.
After setting aside 10% of first doses for educators, including child care workers and college instructors, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that more than 200,000 were vaccinated last week alone.
Further agreements to bring students back this year will depend more on how hard parents push for it, Flint said, and whether local unions trust that administrators will put effective security precautions into place.
“The federal stimulus is critical to the overall health of students and our ability to recover from the past year,” he said. “I don’t think the federal funding will be the decisive factor in getting students into the classroom by April 1 or whatever date people have in mind.”