VCUSD planning hybrid learning
Board members also discuss return to athletics for Vallejo, Jesse Bethel
Getting students back in the classroom was the focus of Wednesday night’s Vallejo City Unified School District’s Governing Board meeting, where board members set a target date of April 12 for a new-look, hybrid form of of instruction for students returning from spring break.
“We have been focused on a phase approach to bringing back students for a number of reasons,” said Cheri Summers, the district’s chief academic officer. “We want the opportunity to test and adjust things with smaller groups of students, as well as to provide time for our families and our students to adjust to very new safety protocols, as well as new ways of teaching and learning.
“At this point is the planning phase,” Summers continued, “we’ve been engaged with gathering information from our families about what preferences and decision-making they are going to have to be involved with, in terms of the selection of returning their students to hybrid learning or staying in distance learning. We know that hybrid learning is going to be a shift — not only for our families, but our teachers. So we’re engaging our principals in conver
sations in what kind of supports we need to provide as we transition to hybrid learning.”
The plan to return students back to in-person instruction comes in four phases, beginning with a survey for parents and guardians of students from transitional kindergarten (TK) through 12th grade. This survey will determine which students will remain in distance learning for the remainder of the 20202021 school year and which will return to campuses for hybrid learning.
The next phase concerns learning hubs and small group cohort classes. Learning Hubs will be opened on targeted campuses across the district to provide workspaces for small groups of students lacking access to the resources necessary to participate in distance learning.
A stable cohort is a group of students and staff that stay together for the duration of the intervention. This group avoids contact with people outside the group.
Keeping staff and students in the same small cohort lowers their exposure risk, and in the event of infection, facilitates contact tracing. Once established, the cohort will not introduce new staff or students. The maximum number of students in a cohort is 14 and the maximum number of staff is two.
Each Learning Hub will have two direct service staff and a site coordinator. Contract staff through Greater Vallejo Recreation District or an appropriate classification VCUSD staff will serve as direct service staff.
The last phases consist of bringing back students to inperson instruction in a hybrid learning method after the district’s spring break period. Hybrid learning combines in-person instruction on campus with distance learning.
The students will be brought back in different weeks, beginning most likely with grades TK-2 in the week of April 12, then 3-6, and finally 7-12 in the week of April 26-30.
Vallejo Superintendent William Spalding said that Gov. Gavin Newsom would like all of the state to begin returning to in-person instruction by April 1, but if the district had a spring break during the next month, no penalty would be accessed as long as there was a plan in place for schools to return on the first possible day after the break.
A motion was made Wednesday night to have Spalding handle the decision making on the return to inperson instruction, while advice and consent would still be heard from the board.
When Vallejo and Jesse Bethel high schools come back to in-person instruction at the end of April, it will be months after some nearby schools have returned. St. Patrick-St. Vincent has been in dual instruction since October, while American Canyon has been meeting twice a week for in-person instruction since October, and four times a week since Monday.
Meanwhile, a plan — not up for approval — concerning the immediate future of sports at Vallejo and Jesse Bethel was introduced.
Spalding said he had a hard time believing that Vallejo and Bethel could move forward with sports for the rest of the school year, citing tests and transportation issues, as well as adhering to the rules of organizations like the North Coast Section, state and county departments of health and federal guidelines.
“Nobody is trying to withhold information. It’s not like someone hands you a plan and says, ‘Go out and do this,'” Spalding said. “Our hope is to provide some kind of practice and conditioning.
Our league (TCAL) has chosen to pack a full year, three sports seasons of sports, into two months. I don’t know if that’s even possible … I think it’s unrealistic. Part of my concern is transportation issues. How do you get kids to these events in El Cerrito? We’ve been told we can’t get them into a white van, as described in the safety issues. Some people are saying, ‘Let people figure out their own way for transportation.’ I have real concerns about that and the liability that comes when you say, ‘OK, I’ll see you at the match.'”
With Solano County currently in the purple tier, Spalding voiced concern for schools in the purple or red tier unable to participate in practices. However, much of what Spalding had to say during the meeting applied to rules that were outdated and no longer relevant since Newsom made a compromise to open up all outdoor sports on Feb. 19
On that date, the state Department of Public Health announced that high school football and other outdoor sports will be allowed to resume play across many parts of California for the first time in nearly 12 months, culminating a long t battle for return-to-play advocates.
Football, baseball, softball, soccer, water polo and lacrosse are among the sports allowed to begin competition in any county in the state with a per-capita case rate of fewer than 14 per 100,000 residents — currently 27 of the state’s 58 counties, including all but Contra Costa and Solano counties in the Bay Area.
However, Solano County is now under that number, with 8.2 new COVID-19 cases a day per 100,000 residents.
In a Bay Area News Group story last month, Dr. Tomás Aragón, the state’s public health officer, cited declining rates of infection across the state as a key factor for the timing of the announcement, which return-to-play advocates have been anticipating all week after nearly two months of negotiations.
“Youth sports are important to our children’s physical and mental health, and our public health approach has worked to balance those benefits against COVID-19 risks,” Aragón said in a statement. “With case rates and hospitalizations declining across California, we are allowing outdoor competition to resume, with modifications and steps to reduce risk, in counties where case rates are lower.”
Other school football teams outside the district such as Benicia, American Canyon and St. Patrick-St. Vincent have been practicing for weeks and have games scheduled later this month.
St. Pat’s moved from the TCAL into the Diablo Athletic League earlier this year when the TCAL fractured. Vallejo and Bethel’s principals were the only ones in the conference to vote no on a plan to move forward. Neither principal returned emails to the Times-Herald explaining their reasons at the time.
St. Pat’s is scheduled to play its first game on March 19 at home. Benicia will open the regular season on either March 12 or March 19.
Other county schools in Vacaville, Fairfield, Winters and Rio Vista are also moving forward with sports, leaving VCUSD schools in the minority.
Spalding and Steele, although not optimistic about moving forward with sports against nearby schools in other districts, did say they were working on a plan for Vallejo and Bethel to play intramural contests against each other, although that was not on the plan presented Wednesday night.