School district keeps reopening date
April 21 target hinges on tier level and staff fully vaccinated
Although Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Monday that the state will give school districts financial incentives to start reopening by the end of this month, San Jose’s largest school district is sticking with its April 21 target date to open classrooms for all grade levels.
The target date hinges on Santa Clara County moving into the orange tier of Newsom’s reopening framework and on school staff getting fully vaccinated, according to a district newsletter released Friday. Educators across the county are now eligible to begin booking appointments to receive their first dose of the coronavirus vaccine.
“We made a commitment to our community that we would offer in-person learning when the county was in the orange tier or when our teachers had the opportunity to complete the vaccine process,” San Jose Unified Superintendent Nancy Albarrán said in a statement. “We also committed to provide as much advance notice as possible so our families and employees would have time to make childcare and other arrangements needed to return in person.”
The plan Newsom unveiled Monday provides financial incentives to school districts that offer in-person instruction by the end of March,
But San Jose Unified said it’s not changing course now because its current approach conforms to an agreement made with teachers that they would be vaccinated or infection levels would have to fall below the red tier level before going back into the classroom with students.
In November 2020, San Jose Unified asked parents to fill out a form declaring whether they would prefer to send their children back to in-person classes or continue distance learning through the remainder of the 2020-2021 school year.
But not every child who may want to go back to an in-person classroom will be able to do so.
The district is capping classes at 50% of the standard capacity. In elementary and middle school. As a result, elementary and middle school classes won’t have more than 15 students and high school classes won’t have more than 16.
The district is giving families the opportunity to change their preference, although that’s contingent on limited in-person capacity due to health and safety requirements, the district said.
A change from selecting in-person learning to distance learning will commit a student to remain in distance learning for the remainder of this school year. Requests for a change from distance learning to in-person will be based on the inperson capacity in the student’s classes.
San Jose Unified, which serves nearly 29,000 students across the city, welcomed back approximately 2,000 students to school campuses last week for in-person support and supervision. Students who are in special-education classes, who have dealt with chronic-absenteeism or who are foster children or homeless were prioritized for those in-person placements.