Gov. Newsom pitches school reopening in Palo Alto classroom.
Gov. Gavin Newsom read to kids in a Palo Alto elementary classroom Tuesday where he pitched the plan he and legislative leaders hatched a day earlier to speed reopening of other public schools whose students have been stuck in online-only distance learning for months.
Barron Park Elementary in the Palo Alto Unified School District was among the first public schools in the Bay Area to reopen to a hybrid blend of remote and in-person instruction last fall, and the governor hailed it a model for others to follow. The district will open grades 7-12 to hybrid learn
ing next week.
“It proves we can do that in other parts of the state,” Newsom said.
The legislative package announced Monday offers $2 billion for schools that reopen by the end of March to help cover costs for personal protective equipment, ventilation upgrades and COVID-19 testing. The package had a first hearing Tuesday. Newsom said he expected to sign it by week’s end.
The California Teachers Association, which has resisted returning teachers to classrooms out of safety concerns, called it a step in the right direction. But the proposal disappointed parents and local officials who had hoped the state would go farther in pushing reluctant districts to reopen faster.
“The deal between the governor and the legislature has shined a light on the keyhole for local school districts, but it remains for the districts to open their schoolhouse doors to thousands of our underserved, struggling students,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said Tuesday. “Nearly every other state and nation has figured out how to open elementary schools safely — why can’t California? It’s not about safety or the science — it’s about the politics.”
The legislative agreement, a revision of February’s 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. The additional $4.6 billion included in the bills would fund expanded learning opportunities, such as summer school, tutoring and mental health services.
It calls for elementary schools located within the lower end of the state’s color-coded purple tier — indicating widespread infections — to offer in-person instruction to students in kindergarten through second grade by the end of March, in order to receive their full share of the $2 billion reopening funding.
In the next-highest redtier counties, where infection rates could allow 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, by the end of March to receive the money.
Regardless of infection rates, schools by the end of March also would have to provide in-person learning in small groups to the most vulnerable students in all grades, such as the homeless or English learners. And online learning would remain an option only for students who request it.
Schools that fail to reopen under those terms by March 31 would lose 1% of their share of the $2 billion in reopening money for every day they delay through May 15, after which they would forfeit the funding.
It was unclear whether the deal would spur many schools to reopen sooner that they had planned. At Elk Grove school district, where the deal was announced Monday, Superintendent Christopher R. Hoffman said it was helpful. And Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, who has led the legislative effort, had tweeted that San Diego Unified’s plans to return to in-person learning April 12 were “in part due to the clear guidance” of the proposal.
Oakland Unified had already announced plans Feb. 24 to reopen mid-March, which it said at the time was “in alignment with the proposed deadlines currently being discussed in Sacramento.”
Others seemed unmoved.
San Jose Unified — Santa Clara County’s largest, with 30,000 students — said it wouldn’t alter plans to resume in-person learning April 21, which conforms to its agreement with teachers that they would be fully vaccinated first or infection levels would fall below the state’s second-highest red tier level. Santa Clara County entered the red tier level Tuesday, in which limited indoor dining also is allowed.
San Francisco Unified Superintendent Vincent Matthews said “the governor’s announcement does not change our timeline because there are still many steps we need to take to get there and many of those aren’t able to be expedited, even with financial incentives.” The city’s plan calls for reopening either when school staff are fully vaccinated or the city progresses from its current red-tier infection rate to the orange tier, which could be a month or more away.
Palo Alto is among a handful of public school districts in Santa Clara County that have already reopened to hybrid instruction — others include Los Altos, Los Gatos and Saratoga, all in affluent suburbs where virus rates have been much lower than in San Jose. All had reopened long before the latest state incentive plan.
Palo Alto Unified Superintendent Don Austin said Tuesday that Newsom’s insistence that schools need to reopen, along with the extra funding to help them do that and his prioritization of teachers for vaccines — guaranteeing them 10% of the state’s supply of the scarce shots, have been helpful in getting schools open.
Asked whether the legislative deal will spur other openings more quickly, Newsom said “I’d like to think that with $2 billion in incentive grants, prioritizing vaccines for teachers, we’ll have a more aggressive narrative.”
President Joe Biden on Tuesday called for teachers and school staff to receive at least one of the two doses of the vaccine by the end of March, similar to Newsom’s move to prioritize teachers, which is incorporated in the legislative package.
But Dr. Celine R. Gounder, an infectious diseases specialist at NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue and assistant professor of medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, said Tuesday that boosting teachers to the front of the vaccine line “doesn’t make any sense.”
“Young, healthy teachers don’t need to be prioritized,” tweeted Gounder, who was named to Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board in November. “Schools are among the safest in-person workplaces.”