Deal to get students into classes reached
Billions in additional funding for schools that bring kids back by the end of March
Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders announced a deal Monday on the state’s school reopening efforts, offering billions of dollars in additional funding for schools that bring kids back to classrooms by the end of March.
Newsom and lawmakers have been negotiating for two months amid mounting pressure to open campuses closed nearly a year by the coronavirus pandemic, as evidence grows that open schools have been able to operate safely and avoid significant outbreaks.
“We incentivize opening up our schools by providing resources to reopen,” Newsom said during a news conference joined by Senate President pro Tempore Toni Atkins and Assembly Speaker Anthony
Rendon, indicating the deal could be approved and on his desk later this week.
But some parents blasted the deal, saying it doesn’t force schools to bring kids back but allows a partial “hybrid” reopening and focuses mostly on getting elementary pupils back into classrooms.
“This isn’t a breakthrough, it’s a failure,” said Pat Reilly, a parent of two students in the Berkeley Unified School District and advocate with OpenSchoolsCA. “Make no mistake, there will still be closed schools and kids left behind a month from now and months afterwards until the governor, legislature or the courts force them open.”
The agreement, a revision of the legislative budget package announced Feb. 18 as Assembly and Senate bills 86, provides a total of $6.6 billion for the state’s public schools to cover costs of reopening and of getting students caught up academically.
Of that, $2 billion would fund safety measures to support in-person instruction, such as personal protective equipment, ventilation upgrades and COVID-19 testing. The additional $4.6 billion would fund expanded learning opportunities, such as summer school, tutoring and mental health services.
By the end of March, public elementary schools whose county infection rates put them in the highest “purple tier,” which allows them to reopen under state guidelines, would have to offer in-person instruction for students in kindergarten through second grade to receive their full share of the $2 billion reopening funding.
In counties where coronavirus infection rates are below the purple tier, allowing all grades to reopen, schools would have to offer in-person instruction to all elementary students from kindergarten through sixth grade, and to at least one middle or high school grade, to receive the money.
It was unclear Monday what effect the deal would have on schools that have been moving at various paces to reopen. San Jose Unified, for example, on Friday announced plans to resume in-person learning April 21, and a spokeswoman confirmed Monday the district does not plan to alter that plan, as it conforms to its agreement with teachers that they would be vaccinated or infection levels would fall below the red tier level.
Schools also would be required to provide in-person learning in small groups to the most vulnerable students in transitional kindergarten through 12th grade. That includes students with disabilities, those who lack internet access, English learners and foster and homeless youth. Online learning would be offered as an option only for students who request it.
Schools that fail to reopen under those terms by March 31 would lose 1% of their allotment from the $2 billion in reopening money for every day they delay through May 15, after which they would forfeit the funding.
“Together, these requirements help ensure schools begin to reopen as soon as possible, in order to build trust and confidence to continue phased reopenings,” Newsom’s office said in a statement.
The new proposal doesn’t require all school staff to be vaccinated before returning to the classroom but codifies the governor’s plan to set aside 10% of the state’s vaccine supply — a minimum of 75,000 doses — for teachers and school staff starting this month. It also clarifies that it doesn’t require school districts to renegotiate existing labor deals on reopening, a concern voiced by many school administrators.
Newsom said that the two mass vaccination sites in Oakland and Los Angeles will hold “educator days” Thursday and Friday. And Santa Clara County announced Monday an educator-focused vaccine clinic at the county fairgrounds.
California Teachers Association President E. Toby Boyd said in a statement Monday afternoon that the new proposal “gets us one step closer to rejoining our students for in-person teaching and learning.” He said teachers appreciate that the proposal “includes the multi-tiered safety measures educators have been calling for” and that it “recognizes community transmission rates and the importance of prioritizing educators for the COVID-19 vaccine before reopening for in-person instruction.”
But he said “we are reviewing the proposal’s details more closely” and indicated concerns about requirements for COVID-19 testing.
Public schools have lagged private schools in reopening, and California districts have returned kids to classrooms slower than those in most other states. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, California Department of Public Health and local health officers have said schools following measures to reduce virus spread have not driven outbreaks.
The governor’s “Safe Schools for All Plan” from December called for offering $2 billion in reopening aid — a base level of $450 per student — for schools that applied by February and eased the bar for elementary schools to reopen even at the lower end of the state’s purple tier for infection rates. But that proposal alone was opposed by large districts.
Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, introduced a bill in December — AB 10 — that would have required schools to reopen within two weeks of coming out of the purple-tier infection rate, setting a clear threshold for when in-person instruction resumes. After it stalled, he led the crafting of the Feb. 18 legislative proposal, which included elements of Newsom’s plan, and said he was happy with Monday’s revised deal.
“While nobody got everything they wanted,” Ting said, “we felt this was a very reasonable compromise.”