Schools considers full time return
Santa Cruz City Schools has its sight set on a model that more closely resembles schools before the pandemic.
SCCS is looking into the possibility of returning elementary students to school full time, according to Superintendent Kris Munro. The next step to a return to normalcy was made possible by new Center for Disease Control and Prevention guidance released Friday.
The new guidelines allow for reduced social distancing measures in schools. Now, instead of requiring students to be spaced 6 feet apart, the CDC has reduced to the required distance to 3 feet.
“We can accommodate all of the families who have asked for in-person learning at this point at 3 feet distance,” Munro said. “We can still offer online learning for families who prefer that.”
For now, the privilege is only extended to elementary schools. Middle and high schools in the district won’t be able to make the appropriate accommodations to support all of their students, even under the looser restrictions.
The transition isn’t official yet, either. SCCS hopes to offer this opportunity to elementary students this spring, but Munro could not guarantee a timeline for the transition. There are several logistical issues that need to be solved first.
“We’re just in the initial stages of this,” Munro said. “There are a lot of details for us to work out including working with all of our stakeholder groups to make plans.”
Elementary students are typically huddled around tables, but that classroom structure does not follow CDC guidelines. When students returned to campus, they returned to classrooms that had individual desks spread 6 feet apart. Now that guidelines allow for closer contact, the district will need to procure more desks for its students.
The district is looking into using spare desks from secondary schools that won’t be used currently. SCCS is also considering expediting new desks to its elementary schools in order to fit the need.
The district’s biggest issue regards transportation. Current COVID-19 regulations only allow buses to be at 50% capacity.
While that capacity limit works for the current hybrid model, it does not work if students are to come back full time. The simple solution would be to hire more bus drivers, which the district did. One driver has accepted a job offer, and a job offer was extended to another candidate. However, the district still hits a roadblock. California Highway Patrol is not currently certifying new school bus drivers, according to SCCS Transportation Supervisor Emil Frates. CHP won’t be able to certify new drivers until May, he reported from a DTAC meeting two weeks ago. However, CHP is still certifying current drivers that need recertification, CHP Public Information Officer Alyssa Gutierrez said.
“With the newer drivers, it’s much harder on the CHP because they tend to test them a little bit more often,” Frates said. “If you’ve already got a driver that’s trained and renewing their license after five years, it’s easier to test them.”
New drivers for the district will be limited to driving vans, which can only transport around three students at a time, Frates said. The use of vans for school transportation was an idea that was implemented for hybrid learning, but not full time on-campus schedules.
However, the conundrum could be a moot point with a simple adjustment. Frates believes the district currently has the transportation staff to handle a full return of elementary students.
The problem the district has right now is that the elementary schools start simultaneously. If the schools were to offset their schedules, that would provide an opportunity for the existing bus drivers to pick up students for multiple schools.
“It’s this little, tiny rough spot we’re getting through,” Frates said. “How do we get back from where we’re at today to where we were before? I think we’ll be able to do it by utilizing the bell time.”
He suggested having one school start 20 minutes earlier, while the other starts 20 minutes later to provide more time.
“That’s 40 minutes,” Frates said. “You could pick up a lot of students in 40 minutes.”
If the district were to try and bring secondary students back full time, then the transportation department would not be able to handle the load at current capacity, according to Frates. However, that won’t be an issue. SCCS plans on sticking to a hybrid model for secondary schools until the next school year.
Currently, the district has its focus on continuing to roll out its return to school plan, as secondary students return to campus starting April 5. In the meantime, it is still figuring out the logistics of how it can bring elementary students on to campus full time.
“Throughout this very difficult year, the needs of our students have been at the center of all of our planning,” Munro said. “It feels very hopeful right now that we are on a trajectory that will bring us closer to normal than we’ve been in a long time.”