Accelerated return introduced

PVUSD lays out plan for return to campus schedule, resumption of in-person instruction

Pajaro Valley Unified School District will accelerate its return to campus after Santa Cruz County entered the red “substantial” tier early Wednesday morning.

The school district’s board of trustees voted 6-0 to approve the accelerated timeline Wednesday night. Trustee Georgia Acosta was absent from the meeting.

“We’re really excited to be able to bring back our students,” PVUSD Superintendent Michelle Rodriguez said.

The original plan to return to campus kept students off campus until April 5 when preschool through first grade students would be welcomed back to PVUSD campuses. Second grade through fifth grade were to be brought back in the following weeks, with no specific dates given. All secondary school students were to be brought back May 1.

This was the latest of all school districts in the county. PVUSD cited the difference of the COVID situation in Watsonville compared with the rest of the county for the decision for the delayed return. Watsonville currently accounts for 52.2% percent of COVID cases in the county, but only makes up 18.7% of the county’s population.

“We know in our community that Watsonville was hit pretty hard with COVID. Most of our schools lie within the boundaries of Watsonville,” vice president of the board Jennifer Schacher said. “The district takes COVID safety very seriously.”

Despite bringing forward an accelerated return to school timeline, the district does not intend on bring elementary students back to campus before April 5. Second grade through 12th grade will be the most impacted by the accelerated timeline.

Second grade through sixth grade will be brought back to campus by April 12. The district also plans to bring eighth graders through 11th graders back to school April 19. Rodriguez has put in special work to bring 12th graders back to campus sooner than other high schoolers.

The plan is the bring high school seniors back to school by April 12. The reason behind this is because seniors won’t be on the same school sites as other high

school students, according to Rodriguez. Therefore, they won’t have as much of an impact as other students when they return to campus. Seniors also put less of a strain on transportation requirements from the school.

“We want to make sure and support our seniors as soon as possible,” Rodriguez said.

California Senate Bill 86 was recently passed to incentivize schools to safely return to campus sooner. The bill would provide $2 billion of incentives to California schools to resume operations at or before the end of March. For each day that a school does not return to in-person instruction, there is a 1% penalty on their incentive allocation.

However, PVUSD won’t miss out on this funding opportunity. The cutoff only applies to calendar school days, according to the bill in a portion of section 2B.

PVUSD schools will be on spring break from March 27 to April 5. Therefore, since April 5 is the first day back from spring break since the cutoff, the district can still qualify for the funding, Rodriguez said.

“We are not penalized for any days that are not calendar days,” Rodriguez said. “You probably heard the April 1 date. We are in spring break during that time, so technically we are starting on time for our preschool, for first grade April 5.”

With a return to school in early April the district is eligible for $6 million of incentives. The district will need to use the money for surveillance testing, personal protective equipment and extending learning time, according to Rodriguez.

While some teachers were happy to be returning to campus with their students, there were some concerns raised. Sue Rose, a teacher at MacQuiddy Elementary, saw the accelerated timeline as a money grab from the district.

“I feel like the district threw out good and safe protocol for money,” she wrote to the board during the public comment section. “This is disappointing. In a time where teachers are leaving the field in droves because of the amount of stress we have experienced this year, the district had an opportunity to do right by us, but money took priority over safety.”

Several board members spoke up to defend the board and the district from such claims before moving on the approve the accelerated return to school.

“We’re not trying to rush kids into school for money,” Schacher said. “We’re trying to get kids safely back into the classroom, teachers back into the classroom, so they can have some semblance of normal for the last few weeks of school. Hopefully by the fall, we will be able to return to a regular schedule.”