PARENTS PROTEST SCHOOL REOPENING DELAYS

Older students in San Marcos won’t go to campus for now

The San Marcos Unified School District board voted to bring elementary students back in phases in January and February, but said middle and high school students will stay in virtual learning until COVID-19 rates decline dramatically.

The decision last week to delay reopenings came in response to new, stricter direction from the state on school reopening protocols. And it met angry protest from parents, who said students’ grades and mental health are deteriorating amid school closures, with little sense of when or if older students will return to campus.

“Your sole job is to consider what is best for the children,” said parent Rachael Wunderlich. “And hands down, that is putting them back in the classroom. Online learning is failing an entire generation.”

Under the new reopening schedule, elementary school students in transitional kindergarten through first grade will return to class in a

hybrid model on Tuesday, with daily in-person instruction in morning or afternoon groups, as previously planned. Second- and thirdgrade students will return to campus on a two-day-perweek hybrid schedule on Feb. 16, following a school break. Fourth- and fifthgraders will return on the two-day hybrid model the next week, starting Feb. 23.

Middle and high school students, who have been out of school entirely since March, will remain in virtual learning indefinitely, returning only when the county returns to the “red tier” of COVID-19 restrictions, with daily case rates at 7 per 100,000 or lower. San Marcos Interim Superintendent Tiffany Campbell said the county’s most recent adjusted case rate was nearly 70 cases per 100,000 daily, about 10 times the rate at which secondary schools are permitted to resume.

The district had opened to elementary students on a hybrid schedule in the fall, with younger students attending class part time on campus. As COVID-19 rates spiked after the Thanksgiving holiday, the board voted to keep elementary students in virtual learning for two weeks in January following winter break, and bring them back to campus on Tuesday.

Middle and high school students had been in virtual learning all fall, and were also expected to return to classrooms on Tuesday. But surging COVID-19 rates in San Diego County, along with tough new state rules, delayed that indefinitely.

The new state rules extend mandatory mask wearing to all grades, require 4 to 6 feet of distance between students’ desks, and tighten rules for establishing “cohorts”

or small, separate groups of students that don’t mix with others. Most significantly for many secondary schools in North County, they defined what constitutes “reopening.”

Under state rules set in the fall, a district that reopened its campuses in the red tier could remain open, even if the county slipped into the more restrictive purple tier, or “deep purple” tier, as officials have described the current surge in cases. For months, however, the state did not give a clear definition of what constituted “reopening.” San Diego County, meanwhile, was advising schools they qualified as “reopened” even if they were only opening to small groups of students.

North County districts, including San Marcos and Carlsbad Unified, and San Dieguito Union High School District, planned to open middle and high school campuses in the spring semester, arguing that they could do so since they had opened campuses to small groups, or “learning pods,” of high-need students.

However, the San Dieguito teachers union sued to stop the reopening plans, arguing that its schools weren’t officially open, and couldn’t return in the purple tier. Last week, the state finally set the definition for a “reopened” school: a school that has offered in-person instruction to all students in at least one grade level.

“If you only reopened to students in a specific subset — for us that was students with disabilities — that does not constitute opened,” Campbell said. “As a result, we are not able to open. This guidance has really shifted what we as school districts are doing. All of our neighboring districts, they are not returning their middle and high school students.”

Campbell said state officials explained that distinction

by stating that schools that opened in the red tier had proven their ability to operate safely during the pandemic, while those that hadn’t reopened at that time had not demonstrated a successful plan.

“If you were not open in the red, you have not proved your mitigation techniques, so you cannot open in the purple,” she said.

Secondary schools will continue to offer smallgroup instruction, as well as permitted athletic activities, clubs and other socially distanced events, giving priority to seniors, Campbell said.

Most parents who called in said they want schools to open quickly and fully. While younger students may need more supervision than older ones, they said teens desperately need socialization with peers and teachers that can only happen in person.

“I do not agree with these guidelines, and feel that our older kids need to get back just as much as our younger ones,” speaker Kimberly Imhoff said, arguing that the district should join parents to push for swifter reopenings. “We need to plan to get kids back as soon as possible; there can be no delay.”

Michelle Shane identified herself as “a high-risk grandmother doing our best to raise my grandson,” and said she was astonished to see schools shut their doors for nearly a year, after weathering threats in earlier years ranging from nuclear war to school shootings.

“What we did in those situations is, we put safety procedures in place,” she said. “Closing the schools is really unheard of. Schools should be considered as essential as hospitals. I’ve never seen in my lifetime where we closed schools.”