State’s make-or-break reopening has arrived
As the state reshuffles vaccine distribution and reopening rules, lawmakers green-light a hardfought plan to bring students back into schools. What does it all mean for economic recovery?
Lawmakers, businesses and educators are scrambling to understand California’s latest surprise shift in pandemic strategy, directly tying economic reopening rules to getting more people in low-income communities vaccinated. The changes are technical — involving health index rankings and vaccine targets and case rates required for businesses to reopen — but the practical effect could be speeding up school and business reopenings.
As states like Texas abandon pandemic precautions altogether, Gov. Gavin Newsom is attempting to bounce back from California’s deadliest bout of the virus by incorporating equity in distributing limited vaccine supply in a state where white, affluent people have disproportionately received early doses. The shift also rankled one union-aligned lawmaker who criticized the administration’s timing of the announcement just before passage of a compromise school reopening plan.
Newsom, who appears to be facing a recall, defended the complexities of his administration’s latest change.
“I wish, you know, I was Herman Cain and I had a 9-9-9 plan,” Newsom said today at a press conference in Stockton, referring to the late Republican presidential candidate who ran on a single-sentence tax plan. “It should be complex in a state that happens to be the most diverse state in the world’s most diverse democracy. It requires nuance. It requires specific strategies.”
If it all works, the state’s new reopening approach, which comes just weeks after a $7.6 billion state stimulus deal, could help stabilize the working class, buoy struggling businesses and provide much-needed relief to working parents. But it’s a tricky balancing act that economists say would defy past economic recoveries, which have widened inequality in the state.
Stabilizing businesses, relief to working parents
Under the reopening plan first unveiled by state officials in a secretive latenight phone call on Wednesday, California will redirect 40% of vaccines to areas hit hardest by the virus. Once 2 million vaccines have been distributed in places that rank in the bottom 25% of a statewide Healthy Places Index, the four-level colorcoded system that the state uses to set reopening rules will be relaxed slightly, allowing businesses to move faster from the most restrictive purple tier into the next tier, red, that allows for some indoor dining, gyms and other activities. Currently, 40 counties with 35 million people are in the purple tier.
If all goes well, state officials plan to ease requirements for counties to move into least restrictive orange and yellow tiers. Though the rules for which businesses may open in which tier are staying the same for now, Newsom’s top economic adviser Dee Dee Myers said the state could ease rules for outdoor activities in the coming days and
evaluate additional changes based on infection and vaccine trends.
“This will give us a chance to start to open those businesses cautiously, allow for more economic activity, bring people back to work, with safety as kind of the North Star,” Myers said.
Pressure to reopen schools
Across the state, school districts scrambled to understand what the combination of the new reopening bill and the changing reopening rules might mean for teachers, parents and students.
Relaxed rules to reach the red tier add pressure to local school districts to physically reopen campuses to older students sooner.
Most counties, if not all, could likely shift to the less-restrictive red tier by an April 1 deadline laid out under the school reopening deal struck by Newsom and the legislative leaders. That means that, in order to get their full share of the $2 billion in incentive funds approved by lawmakers, schools would have to offer some in-person instruction to elementary students and at least one full middleor high-school grade by the end of the month.
The timing of Newsom’s announcement, which came just hours before the school vote, irked some allies of labor. Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, a San Diego Democrat, called the last-minute change dishonest given that the loosened schedule would force some schools to expand class sizes and increase in-person instruction time.
“So if you get calls from your teachers union a little upset, they have the right to be upset,” Gonzalez said before voting for the bill. “You don’t negotiate a deal and then change the parameters of that deal on the day that we’re voting on it.”
Lawmakers gathered in the morning to vote on an exhaustively negotiated school reopening bill, which passed the Senate, 36-0, and 72-4 in the Assembly, with all no’s coming from Republicans.