Campus returns will be full time

Elementary students heading back today for classes five days a week

About 12,500 Riverside elementary school students will begin learning in the classroom five full days a week starting today, as Riverside County’s second-largest public school system moves to provide a more complete return to campus.

Tim Walker, Riverside Unified School District’s assistant superintendent, said that for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic shuttered campuses March 13, 2020, the district’s 30 elementary schools will begin providing the standard 240 minutes of instruction on a daily basis.

The stage also has been set for the five-day-aweek return of middle school students on April 28, and high school students on May 3.

John McCombs, principal at Mark Twain Elementary School, said he welcomed the five-daya-week return for younger kids.

“The families are just so ready to have their kids be back with their friends and back to some sense of normalcy,” he said.

Riverside school board President Tom Hunt characterized today’s milestone as more meaningful for parents than the earlier partial return on March 9, because five full days in class is what many had in mind when they advocated for reopening schools.

Some teachers aren’t ready to return to inperson instruction because of health concerns, said Laura Boling, president of the Riverside City Teachers Association, but most of them will con

tinue teaching online those students who requested distance learning.

Many association members have been teaching part time in classrooms and are ready to teach five days a week, Boling said.

“The district has assured us that all the precautions are in place and we should be ready to go,” she said.

Boling intends later this week to sign on behalf of teachers an agreement that addresses health and safety protocols.

Meanwhile, Boling and Hunt said an agreement was reached Tuesday between district and union officials to reopen middle schools April 28 and high schools on May 3.

Boling and Hunt said the district also agreed to give teachers a one-time 3.5% pay bonus that won’t raise salaries.

Hunt said that, at one point during the holidayseason spike in coronavirus hospitalizations and deaths, he didn’t think any kind of return would occur this school year.

However, Hunt said, “we never gave up hope” and today will be “a great day” for the district that serves about 40,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade.

Riverside’s elementary schools have been busy preparing, Walker said.

McCombs said workers at his school have been moving furniture out of classrooms and pushing desks against walls to make sure there are enough desks to go around and that they are 3 feet apart, in accordance with the latest health protocols.

“We are walking around our classrooms with a yardstick and measuring,” he said.

One month ago, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidelines that allow desks in classrooms to be spaced 3 feet apart instead of 6 feet. The reopening reflects those new rules and Riverside County’s current position in the lessrestrictive orange coronavirus tier for reopening the economy, Walker said.

Boling said classrooms vary in size and configuration by school, “and a lot of them are not big.” Reconfiguring them to accommodate students required teachers to move cabinets holding belongings and supplies elsewhere on campus, she said.

“In most classrooms, there are a teachers’ desk and student desks because there is no room for anything else,” Boling said.

Plexiglas shields are on the front and sides of students’ desks, Walker said.

Enrollment has declined at Mark Twain over the past year, McCombs said. But in the past couple weeks, he said, the school has seen an uptick in registration — probably due to things getting back to normal.