Education

ego County — with some parents and students pushing to reopen and others vehemently opposed.

Running through all the conflicts has been opposition from many teachers and their unions who have been insisting on greater safety precautions than many districts are currently able or willing to implement. In the San Dieguito district, the California Teachers Association has filed suit against the district to block its reopening plans, which the union alleges violate state regulations.

In many counties, private schools are generally offering in-person instruction while public schools are not, fueling concerns that the pandemic will further widen achievement gaps, especially among Black, Latino and other student populations that lag on average test scores. That is dramatically illustrated in Alameda County, one of the few

to publish lists of both public and private schools that are open for in-person instruction. In the county, 81 private and parochial schools are listed as open for in-person instruction compared to only one public school district, the affluent Piedmont Unified.

Following recommendations of advisory panels in California and nationally, teachers and other school employees will likely be among those next in line to receive vaccines, after emergency health workers and long-term care residents. But this prospect has yet to have any noticeable impact on districts’ plans for opening or closing schools because the recommendations have not been formalized and translated into policies, and there are still many unknowns as to when school staff will actually be vaccinated.

Getting a full picture of what is happening in schools across the state is extremely difficult. Only a handful of California’s 58 counties provide detailed information about each school in their

counties. Humboldt, Madera and San Diego counties have collected that information, showing that it is possible to do so.

Nor is the state tracking which schools are offer inperson support and instruction to small groups of 14 or fewer students with special needs, which they are allowed to do even if their counties are in the purple tier, based on guidance issued early in the pandemic.

Even in counties with all or most districts offering in-person instruction, not all students have returned to campus. That’s because in every district some parents have opted for their children to continue to study remotely. In many cases, districts are only offering in-person instruction in the elementary and middle school grades. Research shows that high school students are more likely to be carriers of the virus and more susceptible to developing more serious symptoms; it is also difficult if not impossible to keep them in a single group and in the same classrooms during the

school day.

For now, distance learning remains the primary mode of instruction for the majority of students in the state.

Complicating the entire planning process for opening schools is that it is impos

sible to predict the course of the pandemic over the next month or two. Currently, the crisis is only getting worse. It is likely the state will extend current stay-at-home orders due to expire at the end of December in all or most regions of the state, according to Dr. Mark Ghaly, the secretary of California Health and Human Services. That is likely to raise anxieties among school administrators and others in school communities as they grapple with whether and when to reopen.