New safety protocols await students returning to Santa Rosa schools

When students return to their classrooms next month in Santa Rosa for the first time in more than a year, families will be asked to comply with an array of new rules designed to keep their children and school staff safe from the coronavirus.

Santa Rosa City Schools launched an outreach campaign this month to educate students and parents about what school will look like — and what safety requirements each will be expected to shoulder when kids begin returning on April 1.

The new health and safety protocols, which require students to undergo testing for the virus every two weeks, will change everything from how children are dropped off and picked up from school to how they move through campus and even use the bathroom.

Nearly 500 people attended an online forum Thursday night as district officials answered more than 200 questions that ranged from what recess will look like to who will be in charge of administering the required every-two-weeks nasal swabs of students. The answer to that? They will be self-administered.

Scores of parents on Thursday expressed worry that their children would be reassigned to a new teacher depending on whether they choose to remain in distance learning or return to campus part time on a hybrid schedule. Nearly a quarter of students in elementary schools have chosen to stay with distance learning until the end of the school year, while families of secondary students must submit their choice by Wednesday.

In the meantime, district and school officials have sent out a flurry of communications in both English and Spanish to parents in an attempt to educate families about a slew of new rules and a number of radical changes in how school will run.

Requirements include daily health screenings before school, strict rules on drop-off and pickup, as well a litany of other on-campus changes. Many questions Thursday were focused on elementary schools, as they open first beginning on April 1. A second forum is slated to be held in advance of middle and high schools reopening on April 26.

But many of the health and safety requirements are the same no matter the age of the student. Crucial to all return-to-school plans is parents doing daily health screens of their children before sending them to school, said Superintendent Diann Kitamura.

“I cannot impress upon everyone — adults, children, staff and parents — how important it is for these self-assessments to happen,” she said. “The last thing we want to do is have to close school after waiting so long, over a year, to get back to school. So my expectation is that as parents you all download this application, do the self-assessment and make sure that if your child is not feeling well you keep them home.”

Parents are being asked to download the ParentSquare application to their phones in order to submit a daily health screening questionnaire. Questions include “Are you currently waiting on the results of a COVID-19 test due to symptoms or exposure?” and “Does any household member have symptoms of COVID-19 or are awaiting test results due to symptoms or a known exposure?” as well as a daily temperature check.

Students will not only be assigned to a group marking which days of the week they come to campus — Monday and Tuesday or Thursday and Friday — they will also be assigned a color group designating their drop-off and pickup spot, who they share breaks with and to which bathrooms they are assigned.

“There will be designated areas on the campus for students to be physically distanced and appropriately under safety measures during breaks,” said Tim Zalunardo, director of teaching and learning in the district, in response to an eighth grader’s question about who he would see at break. “You will be out there with multiple classmates and we ask that you adhere to the safety precautions so we can welcome you safely back to school.”

Parents expressed worry Thursday that their children would be assigned a new teacher depending on whether they chose the hybrid model or opted to stay with distance learning until the elementary school year ends June 3.

“We are going our very best to try to keep students with their teachers,“ Assistant Superintendent Anna Guzman said.

That may be tougher at the secondary level where teachers have more subject-specific duties. A middle or high school student who opts to stay with distance learning has a greater chance of being assigned any number of new teachers for the remainder of the year, officials have acknowledged.

All of the protocols are designed to limit the number of people students and teachers come into contact with. Students will be offered a “grab and go” lunch through the district’s Child Nutrition Services program and the vast majority of elementary students will dismissed at 12:20 p.m. and eat off campus. Secondary students are slated to be released at 1 p.m.

After more than a year of distance learning and months of increasingly emotional pleas from parents wanting their children back in the classroom, district officials have urged families to fully engage in all of the return-to-school requirements.

“This agreement has really been developed so there is a clear understanding about parents’ commitment, students’ commitment, teachers’ commitment, (and) the district’s commitment, to ensuring we are safe and healthy as we start school,” Kitmamura said

And the simple step of making sure contact information on file with schools is up to date will prove critical, officials said. Hence the multi-faceted push to reach parents before April 1.

“A part of this agreement is that you need to update your emergency information,” Kitamura said. “The reason this is important is because in case your child becomes sick at school we have to be able to contact a parent or emergency contact as soon as possible because the student needs to go home.”

You can reach Staff Writer Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.