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The Pleasanton Unified School District Board of Trustees will hear the latest news on plans for reopening all 15 K-12 sites at its first regular online meeting of the year on Thursday night, starting 7 p.m.
School reopening plans are on pause while Alameda County remains in the state’s purple tier of COVID-19 monitoring and the Bay Area’s regional ICU capacity is in the single digits, but PUSD officials continue to make progress on a plan for when students return to the classroom.
One of the most significant developments to influence that process was Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent plan to reopen schools released in late December.
Officials said Newsom’s vision “is well aligned to PUSD’s strategy” by prioritizing the reopening of elementary grades in stages and focusing on small cohorts at the secondary level.
The district’s return timeline would see preschoolers and transitional kindergarten through second grade students back on campus two weeks after the county has been in the red tier for 14 days, third through fifth grade a week later, then grades 6 through 12 during the following week.
The exact transitional process for secondary grades is still being determined, and will be clarified at Thursday’s board meeting.
New legislation is also proposed as part of the Safe Schools for All plan, that would deem schools open for in-person instruction “eligible to receive approximately $450 per ADA less students enrolled in the independent learning,” with details on exact funding and requirements still forthcoming.
The funds would be one-time in nature and are meant to support a district’s in-person instruction efforts with mandatory COVID testing, PPE, contact tracing and staffing and vaccinations.
PUSD has already received $6.44 million in one-time Learning Loss Mitigation funds to offset the impact of the pandemic, with about 75% committed or expended to date. Funds were mainly used for PPE as well as materials and technology related to distance learning.
Per the new federal stimulus package, about $6.8 billion in new Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds will also be allocated to California schools based on Title 1 eligibility. However, officials said, “PUSD’s Title 1 eligibility is relatively small and our portion is estimated at about $950,000.”
The district’s operational preparedness and planning for safety and cleaning, ventilation and air quality, child nutrition services, technology, and transportation remains mostly the same, with new information added accordingly.
A risk mitigation team has visited every site “to support implementing site specific logistics at the elementary level” and is also planning to schedule initial visits at all secondary sites. During the visits, officials said district nurses participate “and share valuable insight based on their expertise.”
The team is also working with district business services to develop “responsive procedures and written guidance regarding the distribution of PPE” and finalize the addition of physical markers “that will be longer lasting for ingress, egress, spacing, and directionality.”
In other business
* In a separate agenda item related to school reopening on Thursday evening, the trustees will hear a report on the secondary transition to return to in-person learning.
A recent PUSD survey indicated most of the 1,911 respondents thought remote learning for their secondary student was going “Well” (24.6%), “Somewhat well” (32.9%), or “Better than expected” (28.5%), while 14% selected “Not well at all.”
Most parents also said the social connection with students and teachers was one of the key motivating factors when they thought about their student returning to school, along with academic support and mental health concerns.
Lack of social interaction and too much screen time were also major concerns for respondents, followed by challenges with feedback on student progress.
A total of 949 secondary school students responded at similar rates to how remote learning was going for them, though only 7% said it wasn’t working out well at all.
Social connections and academic support were also their top two priorities for going back to school, and youth respondents also cited the lack of face-to-face interaction and excessive screen time as their main challenges with distance learning.
Ultimately the board approved plans in July for both levels that would provide both remote and hybrid instruction, including in-person instruction on assigned days of the week.
With middle and high school students normally changing classrooms several times a day, PUSD has been faced with the challenge of figuring out how to safely accommodate in-person instruction and minimize mingling among assigned small cohorts.
Other details in district documents on secondary reopening models were similar to those in the district-wide reopening update, including key considerations for health and safety like cleaning protocols and creating traffic flow patterns in hallways and other shared spaces to facilitate physical distancing.
The district recently held several secondary site reopening task force and community town hall meetings, including one on Wednesday night. A student town hall will be held on Jan. 25.
