Santa Rosa City Schools to stay entirely online through December

Santa Rosa City Schools voted unanimously Wednesday night to continue distance learning for its nearly 15,700 students through December.

The move was not unexpected and could trigger widespread reverberations among the other school districts in Sonoma County, which has about 70,000 students in transitional kindergarten through high school spread across 40 districts.

Santa Rosa is by far the largest district in the county. It has a significant connection to the eight elementary districts — Bellevue, Bennett Valley, Kenwood, Mark West, Piner-Olivet, Rincon Valley and Wright — that send the majority of their approximately 11,430 students to Santa Rosa’s middle and high schools. Many families have children in both Santa Rosa City Schools as well as the eight feeders, meaning many may follow Santa Rosa’s lead to help families maintain continuity.

“We don’t have a choice,” trustee Ed Sheffield said of the move to stay online.

To open safely, even in a hybrid plan that would have small cohorts of students on campus in shifts, would require “a tremendous boost from the federal government.”

But the board heard nearly an hour of public comment, roughly divided between many staff members who urged the district to stay with distance learning and a slew of parents who argued children are suffering both academically and emotionally, and charged the district with lagging on realistic return to classrooms plans.

“It doesn’t sound like we are ready should we move to red,” Megan Sherman, a mother of two high school students said of the state’s tiered system of classifying COVID-19 spread. “Families have an expectation that that was the option.”

Robyn Fuentes, a mother of three, said the district needs to have a plan in place that accounts for the presence of the coronavirus but offers in-person learning in some form for families that choose it.

“The impact and the social-emotional toll on my children can’t be measured,” she said. “Science is also saying COVID is here to stay. How long are we going to live like this?”

The decision comes after both Sonoma County Superintendent of Schools Steve Herrington and Public Health Officer Sundari Mase on Aug. 20 recommended that all districts at least make plans for distance learning until 2021.

Still, teachers on Wednesday far and away advocated for the district to remain with distance learning. Making the decision now gives staff time to strengthen the existing online-only operation, Maria Carrillo teacher Tyson Ruszler said.

“The security to remain all the way through December will allow us to make distance learning even better,” he said.

Adding to the push to stay online-only was districts being told last last week that the state will not be ready to provide testing and contact tracing — both of which are requirements for in-person learning — until November. If districts open before that, they are expected to pay and it is unclear if there would be reimbursement, Santa Rosa City Schools Superintendent Diann Kitamura said.

“This really threw us for a loop on Friday,“ she said.

“If we do it now it’s going to come out of our pocket,” she said. “I don’t know what the reimbursement process is from the state.”

Kitamura estimated that to operate testing of 25% of staff every two weeks “we are talking in the million dollar range for that.”

And district officials expressed concern about tapping funds already set aside to address learning loss and redirect them to testing and contact tracing expenses.

“We haven’t had any time to budget what that could end up costing us,” Kitamura said, adding that the district has already approached county education officials about borrowing money.

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