Santa Rosa City Schools: Return to classrooms not likely before March

Santa Rosa City Schools has abandoned hopes of reopening campuses in January and does not expect to welcome students back to classrooms before March, at the earliest, under a new plan that ties Sonoma County’s largest school district directly to the state’s color-coded coronavirus reopening schedule.

The revised plan, approved by the Board of Trustees Monday night, is designed to provide families and district employees with a clear set of targets that will guide decisions on how and when to resume in-person classes.

Only one month ago, the district was preparing to reopen campuses for its youngest students in late January, but the goal began to evaporate as coronavirus cases surged, prompting county public health officials on Thursday to issue a monthlong stay-home order.

"The reality of coming back before February is just not there,“ Santa Rosa City Schools Superintendent Diann Kitamura said. ”That is not me saying this, that is them (health officials) at the county. I think most of you can see where we are in terms of COVID rates, where we are now with this regional stay-at-home order.“

Frustration over the how, when and why of returning nearly 16,000 students and 1,600 teachers and staff to campuses amid a pandemic bubbled at the surface throughout the final board meeting of 2020, which took more than six hours to complete. Parents urged district officials to immediately reopen campuses for small cohorts of high-needs students who benefit from in-person support, which is currently allowed under state guidelines. And above all, they demanded the district prepare to resume classroom instruction the moment the county moves into the red tier, thereby allowing for modified in-person instruction without a waiver.

Parents urged the district to have two distinct plans — one for elementary students and one for secondary students. Many criticized district officials’ assertion that it would take two additional weeks to reopen classrooms after the county meets state targets to advance out of the purple tier, the most restrictive in the state’s coronavirus plan, and completes a mandatory two-week waiting period before entering the red tier.

“I am asking you and pleading with you to turn this around by please approving the return-to-school plan and don’t just stop there. … Firmly commit to return elementary students to school as soon as our county is out of the purple tier for two weeks,” said Stacia Okura, mother of a transitional kindergarten student. “I’m not asking for a firm date. I know that can’t be decided until we are out of purple, but at least commit to opening after two weeks in red.”

But Santa Rosa officials, clearly frustrated by what they described as the slow rollout of school-specific safety protocols from the county health department, said they are readying the best they can. Kitamura said the district needs such protocols before it can reopen classrooms, particularly middle schools and high schools where complicated class schedules force students to intermix, conditions conducive to rapid spread of the virus. Health standards are easier to manage in elementary schools, where students are placed into cohesive cohorts and attend a single class all year.

“It’s really dependent on getting a protocol out of the county to be able to say how many cohorts we can run,” Kitamura said. “Right now what the guideline is to us … the preference is one cohort. One class. For secondary. I’m pretty creative but I don’t know how to get three subjects into one period.”

The debate over reopening classrooms comes as failing grades among secondary students are skyrocketing across the county. On Monday, trustees approved a change to graduation requirements for the class of 2021 as seniors across the district are in dire risk of not graduating next spring.

“We need to know what the protocol (for reopening) is. I don’t want to hear back that it’s up to the school district. It isn’t up to the school district,” Kitamura said. “There are 12 (districts) with secondary programs that don’t know how to move forward because we don’t know how many cohorts to plan for.”

Superintendents of secondary districts are scheduled to meet with county Public Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase and other county officials on Thursday to discuss high school cohort limits.

In the meantime, Kitamura expressed optimism about the return of elementary students once the county moves to the red tier. District officials are awaiting more feedback from parents before locking in a hybrid plan that will combine some online instruction with some in-person classroom time, and either be formatted as two longer in-person days a week or four shorter sessions of in-person instruction.

The proposal approved Monday night is awaiting a vote from the union representing classified employees. The agreement with the Santa Rosa Teachers Association is still being negotiated.

As parents continued to call distance learning a public health emergency, school officials expressed frustration that they are taking the brunt of the public’s ire as they work within confines they say they do not control.

District officials contend they are establishing things like waiting rooms where students and staff who show symptoms of illness can isolate until they leave campus, and crafting master plans that outline preschool health checks, arrival and departure schedules, as well as lunch and recess protocols — all without significant guidance from county health.

“We are ahead of it so much so that our county Public Health has not even issued us guidelines for what are called school isolation rooms, they have not even issued for us what are called site-specific protection plans. Other counties already have that done. Our county Public Health has not given those to schools,” said Steve Mizera, assistant superintendent of student and family services.

“We are ahead of our own Public Health office. So we really need our partner in Public Health to really step forward with us and help us with these guidelines,” he said.

But parents on Monday noted that the district did not apply for a waiver that would have already allowed some limited in-person instruction for transitional kindergarten through third graders. Since the state waiver process opened, just 10 schools in Sonoma County — nine private and one public — were granted the OK to open in a highly modified format. The waiver program was halted in November as coronavirus cases surged.

Some also criticized the district for failing to take advantage of a state directive that allows for in-person support services and some classroom time for English-language learners, special education students and other high-needs populations.

“There are few careers that I respect more than teachers and I don’t want anyone to do anything they are not comfortable with. But there are lots of examples throughout the country where there is some school happening safely,” medical social worker Jaqueline Smith said. “Parents need to know who to push on. If not you, who should we be pushing on at the county to make things move along? Kids need to be back in school. It's a crisis. There is a crisis happening in our community.”

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