Sonoma County educators frustrated by changes to state guidance to reopen schools

Local educators are pressing state officials for more clarity on their guidance to reopen schools as California and Sonoma County wrestle with both surging coronavirus cases and a vaccine rollout criticized as slow and cumbersome.

Still, Santa Rosa City Schools Superintendent Diann Kitamura on Wednesday night unveiled a proposal that would allow the county’s largest district to welcome transitional kindergarten through third graders back to campuses in a part-time, or hybrid, schedule if coronavirus case numbers drop below the state’s current mandate. The plan is also predicated on ongoing talks with bargaining units representing teachers and classified staff.

“SRCS will be ready to open March 1,” Kitamura said at the board of trustees meeting. “Whether we can or not is dependent on this virus.”

But also on Wednesday, Sonoma County Superintendent of Schools Steve Herrington sent an email to leaders of the county’s 40 individual school districts urging them to “pace yourselves” as they try to meet shifting state standards to reopen their campuses, including a new School Site Specific Plan required in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s latest Safe Schools For All proposal.

“The state has not released the template and we have no further information about the components that will be required. The Governor's proposal has not been finalized and even when it is, we don't know if it will be approved by the state Legislature,” Herrington wrote, calling the effort to return to campuses a marathon.

Local officials join a growing chorus criticizing the plan for its lack of specificity. On Monday, Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Austin Beutner again criticized the state for its “patchwork” approach to school reopening, leaving the definition of a safe school environment and the standard for reopening classrooms “up to the individual discretion of 1,037 school districts in the state.”

That alarm is being sounded across Sonoma County as many leaders of the 40 school districts struggle to interpret how to move forward.

"I am an educator. I have a teaching credential and a master’s in education. I can talk to you all day about how kids learn, but I’m not a public health official,“ Healdsburg Unified School District Superintendent Chris Vanden Heuvel said. ”To put the onus of decision-making, when it’s pandemic disaster-related, on educators is ludicrous.“

Educators have been quick to point out that as currently written, the $2 billion promised for reopening campaigns comes from funds already earmarked for education, meaning money used for coronavirus mitigation plans will be drawn from money typically used for academics and other school-based expenses.

“This plan falls short in many ways,“ Vanden Heuvel said. ”The biggest issue is that the money that would be spent for reopening, on ventilation in rooms or PPE (personal protective equipment), the money out of the state comes out of education funds. … That doesn’t help anybody.“

It was the seeming abandonment of the color-coded tier system that dismayed Kitamura. Sonoma County has remained mired in the purple tier — the most restrictive in the state’s reopening plan, indicating the most widespread transmission of the virus. While that has prevented local schools from reopening campuses until the county advances to the red tier, the metrics were largely understood by stakeholders.

“Just when we were getting ready to deal with all the different guidelines and moving forward with opening in the red is when the state and (Newsom) comes out with his plan,” she said. “It’s just really creating more anxiety about moving forward then anything.”

At a virtual Town Hall meeting Tuesday night hosted by state Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, state schools chief Tony Thurmond acknowledged that there is conflict between districts that want clearer mandates on how they can reopen and those that want more flexibility.

“While the superintendent in L.A. is asking for a more definitive mandate that districts must have the same numbers, our superintendents in rural districts are saying they want more flexibility because, simply put, many communities are just different and if you create certain mandates it will be difficult for many to move,” Thurmond said. “That is why the state is creating a way for county health officials to work closely with local districts who best know the needs of those communities.”

Still, he conceded that some educators are spent.

“It has just been a daunting task and many of our educators are saying ‘We just don’t know how to do this,’ ” he said.

Local educators say state decisions are making a difficult job harder. For example, Newsom has proposed changing a key metric for reopening from a weekly average of 7 cases per 100,000 residents to 28.

“How can we get from 7 to 28 per 100,000 in the matter of three days? Where does that make sense?” Kitamura said. “The people out and about are looking to us for answers and we don’t have answers and our credibility gets shot.”

That is leading to simmering resentment that school districts are left navigating changes and explaining those shifts to an increasingly frustrated contingent of families who are desperate for their children to return to the classroom.

"Superintendents are done,“ Kitamura said. ”They are done — fed up with all of this change based on, I don’t think, solid information and more about politics. But no one will say it’s more about politics instead of what is really right for kids.“

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