Newsom's four children, who are between four and 11 years old, attend a private school with a hybrid schedule that alternates them between remote and in-person learning. It will be transitioning to full-time in-person instruction in November.
“They're phasing back into school and we are phasing out of our very challenging distance learning that we've been doing, so many parents are doing up and down the state,” said Newsom when he was asked about how his children are being educated. The governor was speaking at the opening of a $25 million laboratory that he claims will increase the state's capacity to test for COVID-19.
Under Newsom's phased reopening system, private schools in Sacramento County are allowed to reopen. However, most public school districts are still not reopening, such as San Juan Unified School District, which serves Newsom's neighborhood. It currently has a plan to reopen elementary in-person instruction in January.
School districts have to jump through hoops to reopen
Newsom said that he believes the best place for children to get social-emotional learning is through in-person instruction. This is why he stated that, as the governor, he would do everything in his power “to provide support to our districts so they can safely reopen.” Despite stating this, Newsom has placed a lot of obstacles ahead of public school districts that prevent them from reopening. (Related: BREAKING: California judge slaps down Gov. Newsom's unconstitutional COVID lockdowns and mandates, issues INJUNCTION against further Newsom tyranny.)
In order for public school districts to reopen, their county must enter the “red tier” for 14 days, which means that they must have no more than seven new daily COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents, and have a positivity rate and health equity quartile of no greater than eight percent.
Schools must also have a large enough supply of personal protective equipment (PPE). Newsom claims that the state has provided each school district with a two-month supply of PPE.
In 21 counties in the state, school districts are offering some kind of in-person classes through blended learning or are preparing to move to all in-person instruction in the coming days or weeks. In almost all cases, parents will still be given the option of keeping their children at home for distance learning if they so choose.
Even if a public school district can jump through all these hurdles, they still have to contend with their chapter of the California Teachers Association (CTA), which represents over 300,000 teachers in the state. The CTA has been adamant that in-person instruction is still too dangerous, and the state has to keep negotiating with teachers' unions who have raised concerns regarding their safety and the safety of their students.
In an open letter to Newsom, the CTA also demanded that the state have adequate measures for contact tracing and “robust” COVID-19 testing in place. They also want economic safety nets for teachers who need to self-isolate and other preventative measures to be put in place before full in-person instruction can resume.
Furthermore, the state is allowing counties to decide how quickly school districts can move to in-person instruction. For example, San Francisco is keeping all of its public schools closed with no plans of reopening before the end of the year even though it has given at least 82 private schools permission to open their campuses.
If nothing is done soon to give public school districts more freedom to reopen, students will increasingly suffer academically because of the prolonged online instruction.
Learn more about the state of the coronavirus lockdown in California as well as other lockdowns across the country and the world by reading the latest articles at Pandemic.news.
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