Many Bay Area schools revert to remote instruction
With more than 500 students testing positive for the coronavirus and teachers present in fewer than half of classrooms, Hayward Unified School District will shut down in-person instruction for at least a week starting Monday and hold classes remotely.
By switching to distance learning, the central Alameda County district risks losing $2.5 million a day in per-pupil funding if the remote instruction doesn’t meet state requirements, Trustee Ken Rawdon said during an emergency meeting online Friday, though he supported the move. The board voted 4-1 to suspend in-classroom instruction, then meet again Friday to reassess.
Just one trustee, Sara Prada, opposed the decision, saying the suspension should be for longer, at least a month.
“A week isn’t enough for a sick person to get well,” Prada said in the meeting. “None of us want to be in distance learning. But we have the opportunity to be proactive and protect more of our students. ... A week is nothing.”
Milpitas Unified School District, in Santa Clara County, reversed plans to hold classes remotely this week. District officials notified families Saturday that after consulting with health officials, they determined that they didn’t have the authority to declare a district-wide quarantine. They had initially told students they would be online only for the next week of instruction.
And Bishop O’Dowd, a private Catholic high school in Oakland, has told families that it will hold remote instruction for the next two weeks.
The K-12 schools are following some universities, including Stanford, Cal State East Bay and seven UC campuses including Davis and Santa Cruz, which also have paused in-person instruction.
The school closures come during a surge of the highly infectious omicron coronavirus variant that has not spared children, as earlier variants largely did. A huge shortage of coronavirus test kits has also fueled anxiety among some school officials and parents. In Oakland, a dozen schools were forced to shut down Friday when 500 teachers — about 20% — called in sick, some of them as part of a “sickout” to protest what they said are unsafe working conditions during the omicron surge. That protest followed a similar one in San Francisco on Thursday, when 900 teachers didn’t show up.
Some county offices of education and county health officials are urging districts not to shut down in-person instruction.
The Santa Clara County Office of Education issued a joint statement Friday with county health officer Dr. Sara Cody urging districts to continue in-person learning.
“We need to find ways to coexist and live with COVID,” Cody said in the statement, adding that “remote learning does not support student mental health, emotional health, and academic well-being the way that in-person learning does.”
Mary Ann Dewan, superintendent of the Santa Clara County Office of Education, noted that her office was helping school districts practice safety protocols.
“Students learn best when they are amongst their peers and have access to school resources,” the statement said.
Hayward Unified’s Superintendent Matt Wayne said the Alameda County Office of Education had encouraged his district to remain open. Nevertheless, he recommended that the trustees suspend in-person classes.
“The decision was made in the interest of student and staff safety,” Wayne later told The Chronicle. The time away “will allow our staff to complete quarantine periods, access testing, and receive test results that have been delayed due to high demand for testing.”
Most children are not yet boosted, which accords the best protection from omicron, and those younger than 5 still can’t receive vaccines. Last week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved boosters for people ages 12 to 17.
On Friday, Stanford
University announced it will delay the start of in-person classes after more than 700 students, staff and faculty tested positive for the coronavirus.
Cal State East Bay announced Thursday that it will begin its spring semester Jan. 18 fully online, but return to a mixture of in-person and remote classes as soon as Jan. 31.
The move “will help us maintain a high level of safety,” campus President Cathy Sandeen said in a statement.