MDUSD board, Governor move toward campus reopening

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY—Citing a loss of 1000 students who have left the district due to nearly a year of distance learning caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Mt. Diablo Unified School District board members last week followed the recommendation of superintendent Adam Clark in unanimously approving a plan for reopening school campuses.

Last Friday, Governor Gavin Newsom and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention both weighed in with information and proposals to get public school students back on school campuses for the first time since mid-March 2020.

Superintendent Clark gave a dire prognosis to the board last Wednesday when he acknowledged “the tremendous difficulty and stress that distance learning has had on families” and said the reduced enrollment in MDUSD could lead to campus closures and staff layoffs. “That’s the harsh reality of public education. We staff in terms of enrollment,” Clark said.

He noted the improved Contra Costa County COVID-19 metrics should allow the reopening of campuses sooner rather than later. At the board meeting it was mentioned that the diverse nature of the Mt. Diablo district complicates reopening plans with cities experiencing different levels of COVID-19 cases.

Many districts not ready

Eight of the county’s 18 districts have reached agreements with their unions over the process for reopening but MDUSD is not one of them. Only the Acalanes and San Ramon school districts have embarked on hybrid learning among the county’s public school districts.

The MDUSD Board’s vote set up a showdown with the district’s employee unions which have held out approving any such move until the unions feel its member’s health and safety concerns are addressed. Since there are less than four months before this term ends, widespread vaccination of staff, parents and students will not happen in time to have any impact on school-opening decisions.

The plan approved by the board would have elementary classes broken into two groups with one on campus Monday-Tuesday and the other group Thursday-Friday with no on-campus instruction on Wednesday. For high schools, period 1-2-3 classes would be held Monday and Thursday and period 4-5-6 on Tuesday and Friday with no classes on campus Wednesday.

Under these hybrid scenarios students could opt for continued distance learning.

Safe schools for all

Last Friday the governor announced that the state has launched the Safe Schools for All Plan’s interactive Safe Schools Reopening Map, an online tool providing a statewide snapshot of the status of school reopening across California.

The map displays data from all school types – including school districts and charter and private schools – indicating status on reopening, safety planning and COVID-19 support. Looking at the Bay Area map there are a few pockets showing public school districts with campuses open for elementary schools, a smaller number for middle schools and virtually none for high schools.

The same day, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released guidelines for reopening schools that focus on five key COVID-19 mitigation strategies: the universal and correct wearing of masks; physical distancing; washing hands; cleaning facilities and improving ventilation; and contact tracing, isolation and quarantine.

Not among those key strategies were vaccines and testing as the agency called them “additional layers” of COVID-19 prevention.

“I want to be clear, with this operational strategy, CDC is not mandating that schools reopen. These recommendations simply provide schools a long-needed roadmap for how to do so safely under different levels of disease in the community,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said.