Sonoma County schools report sharp uptick in student, staff absences in first week after holiday break

When classroom bells echo Monday morning across Sonoma County, educators aren’t certain just how many students and school staffers will be present to hear them.

During the first week back in the classroom following winter break, Sonoma County schools experienced some of their most severe staff shortages of the academic year, along with double the number of student absences for some districts.

Last week’s spikes in student and employee absences were tied mostly to the surge in new COVID-19 omicron variant cases, which have spurred school officials to lean more heavily on backup resources and the flexibility honed throughout 22 months of pandemic pressure.

“I wouldn’t say we’re desperate,” said Mike Shepherd, assistant superintendent of human resources for Santa Rosa City Schools. “We had some challenges.”

The county’s large school districts reported significant, but mostly manageable increases in the number of staff who couldn’t work while either awaiting COVID test results after exposures, isolating due to infection or were out for other reasons.

Student absences showed a more marked increase — more than doubling in some districts from before winter break, administrators said.

And the trend may get worse amid wide transmission of the highly infectious omicron variant and as many students begin to undergo more frequent testing. Most didn’t receive COVID tests from their schools until this past week.

Jeni Straight, a registered nurse with Sonoma County Public Health’s schools team, said her team has been “overwhelmed” with calls from schools last week as reports of cases streamed in.

“We left the office last week before the new year with a pretty empty inbox,” she said. “By Monday, things had exploded on our end.”

Health officials said they weren’t certain how the growing COVID surge will continue to affect schools over the next few weeks.

“Really, this is novel for all of us,” Straight said. “It’s hard to really predict what might happen.”

Doubling on student absences

The exact number of students who missed school days across Sonoma County’s 40 public school districts in the first week isn’t yet known. But based on numbers from the largest districts, it was likely somewhere in the thousands, out of the county’s 67,000 public school students.

In Cotati-Rohnert Park Unified School District, the county’s third-largest K-12 school district, the average absentee rate among its students was 14.6% in the first week.

That rate is more than double that of the week in January 2020 which immediately followed winter break. About 6% of students were absent then, said Superintendent Mayra Perez.

This year, she said, “It’s more exaggerated because of COVID.”

As a result, “we’re going to have to be flexible,” she said. “There’s a lot of kids out.”

Santa Rosa City Schools saw its student absentee rate double from before winter break, surging from 10% to 20%. Windsor saw a similar increase, rising as high as 21.5% on Friday and averaging 17.1% absenteeism throughout the week.

Heather Bailey, spokeswoman for the Windsor Unified School District, didn’t have exact numbers from the week before winter break, but said anecdotally, the numbers were “very high” in comparison.

Replenishment in the supply of rapid antigen tests given to families, both during and since winter break, has played a role in those soaring numbers, said Straight, the nurse with county public health.

And they are unlikely to decline, at least in the short term, because some students took COVID tests for the first time since winter break, at the end of their first week back in school or over the weekend.

Santa Rosa City Schools, for example, distributed rapid antigen test kits it received Jan. 5 from the California Department of Public Health to its 15,000 students on Friday. Each kit contains two tests, which produce results in about 15 minutes.

Students were instructed to use the first of the tests as soon as possible after receiving a kit. If they test positive, their parents or guardians are asked to keep them isolated at home, and to report the positive test to their school.

Locally, three school districts, including Cotati-Rohnert Park, were able to distribute tests to students before they returned to the classroom from winter break. But far more had to wait until the week they returned to the classroom to get rapid tests into their students’ hands.

A dilemma for families

Maya Missakian, director of nursing for the county, acknowledged that while the numbers of positive cases and absences due to quarantine and isolation are alarming, the alternative would be for — at least some — students to perhaps unknowingly spread COVID.

“I think it’s fair to assume there’s going to be an increase in cases because of (testing),” she said. “But that’s a good thing. The reality is, we’re catching these kids that ordinarily might have wound up at school because they might have had really mild symptoms or no symptoms at all.”

Every COVID case has ripple effects, however, and even more families were affected by notifications that their children were exposed this week, which sent them scrambling to find tests.

Christa Rieger, parent to one son at Liberty Elementary School and another at Petaluma High School, said her younger son, Cody, was notified of a school COVID exposure on Thursday.

He was able to receive a rapid test at school, which came back negative. But he remains on a modified quarantine that prohibits him from attending day care after he’s released from school, through all of next week.

For Rieger and her husband, who both work, a modified quarantine still disrupts their routines, forcing them to leave early to pick up Cory.

“For us to survive and pay for our rent and groceries, I have to be able to work, along with my husband,” Rieger said. Leaving work early or calling in sick, she said, “puts my job in jeopardy.”

Outside of school-operated testing sites and distribution of rapid tests, many families continue to struggle to find tests. Rieger said her older son, Eddie, was able to test before going back to school with a rapid test she happened to have bought at a local CVS a few weeks ago.

Many of his classmates at Petaluma High were out this week, sick or awaiting test results.

“I definitely think there’s going to be more,” Rieger said. “We’ve kind of put our own home on lockdown again.”

Scramble to find substitutes

Staff shortages that have troubled schools throughout the year were especially pronounced in the first week back from break, though Sonoma County officials reported less dire numbers than in larger metropolitan Bay Area districts.

That includes San Francisco, which on Jan. 4 had to tend to more than 400 classrooms that couldn’t be covered by substitute teachers, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Santa Rosa City Schools, which employs about 1,500 certificated and classified staff, had 94 employees absent Jan. 3, including teachers, aides and other staff. On Jan. 4, 96 absences needed to be covered.

In the fall, Shepherd said the district is typically able to cover about 50 open teaching positions. Since then, the district has been able to hire additional substitutes by raising its pay rates. But, especially last week, it still needed to cover any holes.

The number of absent teachers for whom substitutes couldn’t be found fluctuated throughout the week, said Shepherd. On Jan. 3, there were 28 positions to cover. A day later, there were 23.

In those cases, he and the district’s principals relied on the same solutions they have leaned on throughout the school year: asking teachers to step in during their prep periods, with additional compensation, or enlisting administrators from the school site or the district office to assist.

“Principals are used to that,” Shepherd said. “That’s the first thing on their mind in the morning, student safety and making sure classes are covered. We’ve been handling it great because of our all-hands-on-deck approach.”

Windsor and Cotati-Rohnert Park also reported higher numbers of staff needing coverage.

About 20 more people were out each day throughout the week in Cotati-Rohnert Park compared to December staff absences, or an additional 2.4% of the school district workforce.

“It’s not like 70% of our teachers are out, but we’re definitely feeling the impact,” said Jen Hansen, director of human resources.

“Even having a couple of people out has a big impact. I think the really important thing is everybody is really pulling together and helping out.”

Ripple effects on education, staff

Kathryn Howell, president of the Santa Rosa Teachers Association, said the union is concerned about the instances when students without their regular teacher present are split up and combined with other classes. That increases the number of people placed in the same room.

“The question top of everyone’s minds is, at what point do we decide we can’t have school on a given day (due to staff shortages)?” she said.

Steve Herrington, Sonoma County’s superintendent of schools, addressed a similar question from an administrator during a webinar hosted Friday afternoon on the topic of COVID and schools.

“They would have to either work through substitutes, or through putting a para-educator in there with a rotation of a certificated person every 30 minutes, which meets the minimum standard approval of the state,” he said, referring to an instructional aide.

“You're not going to be able to close your school because of shortage of staff, that is not allowed under California statute at this time.

But questions about school closures related to COVID spread remain in teachers’, parents’ and administrators’ minds.

In the same webinar, Herrington reminded administrators that the decision to close a school over COVID outbreaks remains solely in the county Health Department’s hands. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration ruled out, for now, a return to home-based learning predominant for schools last academic year.

“Statutorily, it has been discontinued,” Herrington said. “Districts and schools do not have the authority unilaterally to return to remote classes. Now, our private school partners can do that. But neither charters nor public schools can do that.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated to correct Cody Rieger’s first name.

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