Reopening plan likely to test Santa Rosa City Schools’ equity policies

When the 2020-21 school year opens on Aug. 13 for Santa Rosa City Schools’ 16,000 students and 1,600 staffers spread across 24 campuses, it will be extraordinarily different.

It will be different because the coronavirus pandemic has forced health and safety guidelines that prohibit students from being within 6 feet of each other and their teachers. It will be different because most students and teachers will be wearing masks. It will be different because students are likely not going to be on campus five days a week ‒ if they are on campus at all. And it will be different because programs offered to handle the unprecedented pressures of the pandemic will likely not look the same campus to campus.

As Santa Rosa City Schools officials debate a reopening plan at the school board’s regular meeting Wednesday, chief among concerns will be how to provide education and supervision for thousands of students on weekdays when they are not in a traditional classroom, either because of a part-time hybrid schedule or a full distance learning program.

It’s a piece of the puzzle that points to the school district’s increasing role as both educator and child care provider. And it’s an issue that shines a spotlight on chronic inequities in schools across Sonoma County. The reality that accompanies any decision to implement any form of distance learning is that not all families have a parent who can work from home and oversee distance learning and not all families have computers for every child or sufficient WiFi connectivity to allow students to study at the same time.

“We are not just talking about working parents. We are talking about working family members and working kids bringing in household income,” Santa Rosa School Board trustee Ed Sheffield said. “And then to be the backup teacher, the at-home teacher, it might be a big sister or big brother who is getting a kindergartner out of bed and getting them to a Zoom meeting or logged into a Chromebook.”

’Our parents need to go to work’

Engineering the safe return of 70,000 school kids to classrooms across Sonoma County is perhaps the most important ‒ and often overlooked ‒ component of reopening the county’s economy. As such, officials at the county’s largest school district are wrestling with how to craft education and child care models that address a wide range of needs ‒ from schools where the vast majority of students are considered poor and are more likely to need full day care and assistance with distance learning, to campuses where students and families are more affluent and parents have the ability for work from home.

“For the entire community, our parents need to go to work for the economics alone. And for some of our families, so they can maintain their basic necessities for home and shelter and food,” said Diann Kitamura, superintendent of Santa Rosa City Schools.

And she acknowledged that student needs, and how the district addresses them, will likely look different from campus to campus. Partnerships are being proposed with agencies including Boys & Girls clubs, the Sonoma County Water Agency, LandPaths and Community Child Care Council, or 4Cs, to offer supervision and education programs on school days when children are not in traditional classes.

“There is going to be a provision around how do we take care of students when they are not (doing) in-person learning,” Kitamura said. “Special ed, (English learner) students, struggling students ‒ we really need to have them in person more so that we can ensure that their learning is continuing and supported.”

’Remedy the inequities’

Sonoma County’s largest school district has long grappled with a decades-old school choice policy that led to districtwide white flight and school populations that in many cases do not reflect neighborhood, district or even citywide demographics. Those policies are coming under increased scrutiny from board members who are calling for a redrawing of district lines to create student populations that more accurately reflect the demographics of Santa Rosa on the whole.

District officials have in recent years adopted a vision statement that reads in part, “to ensure that equity is the intentional result of district decisions, the Board shall consider whether its decisions address the needs of students from racial, ethnic, and indigent communities and remedy the inequities that such communities experienced in the context of a history of exclusion, discrimination, and segregation.”

That commitment will be put to the test as district officials and stakeholders work to create a school reopening plan that addresses the needs of campuses with larger populations of higher-need students, including English language learners, special education students, foster youth and students living in poverty.

The issue is most acute at the elementary school level, where child care issues are most pressing.

More than 62% of elementary students and 51% of middle- and high-schoolers in the district are Latino ‒ a population that has been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus pandemic. More than 75% of all infections in Sonoma County are in the Latino population, despite Latinos making up just 27% of the 500,000 people who live here. The numbers are even more stark among young, school-age people: 113 of 120 youths under 18 — 94% — who tested positive for the virus through June 18 were Latino, according to county data.

Technology lacking in some households

But for some board members, the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic represent an opportunity.

“I think that is the beautiful part of having equity policies. We recognize that different folks are going to need different things and finding the resources to give them what they need,” said school board trustee Alegria De La Cruz. “What it looks like at every school is going to be different. That is what equity means.”

Schools with children who have less access to technology and connectivity may have more on-campus distance learning programs on off days, officials said.

“It recognizes kind of what the privilege of telecommuting and good WiFi allows different families to be able to do,” De La Cruz said. “We are having really cool conversations: ’How do you do outdoor ed full time for those kids who need real, in-touch (teaching) from a human being?’”

When classrooms closed in March to slow the spread of the coronavirus, nearly 10 weeks of distance learning in the spring served as a stark reminder that adults in some families do not have the ability to work from home and many households are ill-equipped for a technology-heavy online learning program.

That divide threatens to exacerbate existing inequities, board members said.

“It’s going to be tough in the sense that we are not sure what it’s going to look like but we do need to address the inequity in terms of the Latinx population having less access to technology and the ability for parents to be able to assist and provide help with work,” trustee Omar Medina said.

California’s $202 billion budget, and the structure of the allocation for education funding in recent years, allows the state’s approximately 1,000 school districts to direct resources to English-language learners, special education students and foster youth. In the age of coronavirus, those funds could be directed toward keeping kids in programs on so-called off days of the hybrid program, rather than sending them home to navigate distance learning on their own.

At one end of the spectrum in the district are Luther Burbank, James Monroe and Abraham Lincoln elementary schools, where 9 out of 10 students are Latino and more than 8 out of 10 qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. English language learners make up nearly 54% of Burbank’s enrollment, about 67% of Lincoln’s and almost 68% at Monroe.

In contrast, at Proctor Terrace Elementary, 28% of enrollment is Latino, 34% qualify for a reduced-price lunch and about 12% are English learners. At Hidden Valley — the largest elementary school in the district by enrollment at about 530 students — about 3 in 10 are Latino, while almost 43% qualify for a reduced-priced lunch and about 14% are English learners.

At the Santa Rosa Charter School for the Arts, 23.5% of students are Latino, 36% qualify for a reduced-price lunch and nearly 7% percent are English learners. At Santa Rosa French-American Charter School, 23% of students are Latino, 26% qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch and more than 15% are English learners.

What is offered at Burbank, Monroe or Lincoln could look different than what is offered at Proctor, Hidden Valley, the arts charter or the French-American school, Kitamura said.

And she acknowledged that that might not sit well with everyone.

“Some people might be upset,” she said. “But the numbers are the numbers. The data are the data.”

The pandemic has served to expose inequities that have long existed, Sheffield said. And the budget crunch has made decisions that much tougher.

“The complexities of our demographics and the role of schools, maybe it shines a light on the much, much, much bigger issue of inequality tied to race and economics,” he said. “This is the beginning of a true reality check.”

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