Sonoma County school superintendents seek relief from COVID-19 impacts

As operational requirements of COVID continue to burden schools and strain staff, Sonoma County superintendents are appealing to state and county representatives for relief.

In a Feb. 8 letter sent to the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, State Sen. Mike McGuire and Gov. Gavin Newsom, local superintendents said COVID-related duties such as testing and contact tracing are hampering school staff’s capacity to focus on academic and social emotional recovery from the pandemic.

And as public health officials increasingly eye the coming endemic stage of the disease, the school leaders are calling for plans to ease pressure on both their staff and district budgets from COVID.

All 40 school district superintendents in Sonoma County signed onto the letter.

“Our principals continue to focus huge amounts of time and energy on COVID response and mitigation, our teachers have had to become public health experts, and we, the superintendents, are spending our time dealing with COVID rather than moving our schools, students and staff forward,” the letter reads in part.

The school leaders emphasized that the focus on implementing COVID protocols has left district and school staff with little time and energy to devote to learning recovery or tending to students’ well-being. At the same time, though, students’ need for academic and social emotional support has never been higher, they said.

“Now, it’s about doing a good job at educating our students and meeting their needs, which are vast right now,” said Jeremy Decker, superintendent of Windsor Unified School District.

“We really are ready to take that challenge on next, but we need this one aspect to go in the rearview mirror and have somebody else take it on,” he said.

One of the top recommendations the administrators made to the elected officials was to find ways to shift the burden of COVID testing, isolation and quarantine off of school staff, and onto bona fide health care providers.

“Schools can provide venues and access,” the letter read in part. “But other persons, agencies, or entities should be responsible for intake, notifications, guidance and tracing.”

James Gore, chair of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, said he read the superintendents’ letter as “not a plea for help, but a plea for partnership.”

That would likely involve group conversations with the county’s large health care providers, such as Sutter and Kaiser Permanente, he said.

He expressed gratitude to the superintendents for speaking out about their needs and providing clear examples of actions that could help.

“I can tell you, at our next board meeting when we review COVID, this will be front and center,” he said.

Several other of the superintendents’ requests will likely require legislative action. One example: districts are asking for reprieve from the impacts of COVID-driven absences on their base funding.

Student absences have soared this year, particularly during the omicron surge. More of them have occurred through quarantine protocols rather than instances of COVID infection.

“We have a great attendance rate most years, but we’re running in the low 90s right now,” Decker said. Every percentage point drop can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars lost, he said.

McGuire, D-Healdsburg, said the legislature will consider a couple of bills in the current session that deal with the funding model for public schools in California.

That includes a bill introduced in January by State Sen. Anthony Portantino, D-La Cañada Flintridge, which would fund public schools based on enrollment rather than attendance.

“The outlook as we continue to move forward out of the pandemic is challenging, to say the least, when it comes to the financial forecast for many school districts,” McGuire said. “It’s beyond time we move to a new base funding model for K-12 schools.”

School leaders also asked for increased flexibility on mandated reporting requirements for various funding, such as the Local Control Accountability Plan supplement, as well as relaxation of the requirements for the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program, funded through Measure 98.

“It’s challenging to meet the deadlines, challenging to know what the deadlines are, to keep track of all the moving parts," said Tracy Smith, superintendent of Rincon Valley Union School District. ”Everybody’s doing the best we can.“

California released an endemic COVID response plan Thursday, which emphasizes prevention and ready reactions to outbreaks, rather than mandates.

Newsom on Feb. 18 said the state will lay out a timeline for rolling back masking policies no later than Feb. 28.

Ron Calloway, superintendent of the Mark West Union School District, said whatever changes come, district leaders are hoping to see closer alignment between the California Department of Public Health and CalOSHA as it pertains to schools and staff.

“We want to make sure everything’s aligned and we have clear direction,” he said.

As the legislature and the county move through the budget process in the coming months, local superintendents will likely continue to weigh in, Smith said.

“We want to be part of the conversation moving forward so that schools can have a balance again,” she said. “This is not a pity party. This advocacy for what we know, from our experience, our schools and kids need.”

You can reach Staff Writer Kaylee Tornay at 707-521-5250 or kaylee.tornay@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @ka_tornay.