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The Pleasanton school board is set to hear a report on reopening Pleasanton Unified School District elementary sites, as well as an update on plans to bring back middle and high school students, at its final online meeting of the year on Tuesday night, starting 7 p.m.
No tentative return date for students in transitional kindergarten through fifth grade has been proposed yet, but district spokesman Patrick Gannon confirmed a discussion about a reopening date will take place on Tuesday evening.
Plans to move forward with an original Jan. 4 return date for TK-5 students were unanimously approved in late October, but both Alameda County’s shift back into the purple tier of the state’s color-coded COVID-19 monitoring system before Thanksgiving and statewide stay-at-home orders have forced PUSD to postpone reopening until the county is back in the red tier for 14 days.
Daycare, child care and small cohort programs are permitted to still operate in all tiers. Any educational institution already providing in-person before the state order took effect may also continue to do so.
Youth sports and extracurricular activities are also allowed “under the supervision of a childcare or after school program or as part of an organized and supervised extracurricular program.”
PUSD is preparing to enter negotiations with the teachers union about reopening for hybrid in-person learning before Christmas and again in early January.
According to Gannon, “We negotiated three prep days with our teacher association, two of which will occur on Jan. 4 and 5, which pushes our planned start date to Thursday, Jan. 7,” noting that Wednesdays are remote days.
“Since the county’s order doesn’t lift until Jan. 4, 2021, this poses obvious challenges for attempting to reopen on Jan. 7,” Gannon said.
PUSD will offer a no-cost surveillance testing program for COVID-19 to all employees. The district recently approved a contract with a testing service provider and received approximately 2,500 test kits in the last couple weeks, according to public documents.
A small pilot group will be offered testing starting this week, with the goal of gathering information to help extend testing to all district employees on a monthly basis.
The current reopening plan is mostly the same but with additional details under different sections, including statewide and regional COVID-19 data.
A risk mitigation team has advised school principals on health and safety and social distancing protocols in preparation for reopening. In the meantime, a school reopening task force has continued to weigh in and district staff has been finalizing site specific logistics for cleaning, eating, food service as well as fully remote and hybrid teaching assignments.
Assigned student cohorts that will receive on-site instruction on specific designated days of the week are also being finalized. Parents who plan to continue their child with remote distance learning will still have the option.
The board will review the strategy for reopening secondary schools in January, though sixth- through ninth-graders may return first.
When students return to the classroom will be affected by several factors including COVID data trends (PUSD said the “Thanksgiving spike is just now materializing”), the county’s tier status and the state shelter orders that will remain in place until after winter break, the availability of substitute teachers, the state of labor union negotiations, and the availability of testing and vaccines.
In other business
* The board will review a report on the district’s “Learning Loss Mitigation” funds on Tuesday. Following the onset of the pandemic, state and federal funds “were allocated to school districts to help migrate the crisis” and “address learning loss, academic support services and health and safety concerns,” including state Senate Bill 820 and the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
PUSD received about $6.4 million in combined funding from both sources. As of Dec. 4, about $4.9 million has been spent or purchased orders issues, according to the district.
More than $2.5 million has been spent on materials and supplies, and another $1 million was used for equipment. Other expenditures include staff salaries and benefits, textbooks, workers compensation, and communications and professional services.
The district expects to “fully expend these resources before any of the federal and state deadlines.”
* The board will welcome two new trustees and one re-elected member during the oath of office ceremony for the general election winners — incumbent Trustee Steve Maher and newcomers Mary Jo Carreon and Kelly Mokashi.
The district will also host a recognition ceremony in honor of outgoing Trustee Jamie Yee, who served on the board for 12 years. She lost her re-election bid in the Nov. 3 election.
The proceedings will include the board conducting its annual reorganization, selecting a new board president and vice president for 2021.
The oath-of-office ceremony will take place at 5 p.m., before the board adjourns into closed session ahead of the 7 p.m. open meeting.
It’s an absolute crime that our kids aren’t in school, the administration and teachers Union failed to open as planned. Their combined inability to sort out their issues in order to get our kids in the classroom are an embarrassment. Leadership on both sides should step down. Now, we missed the window and are subject to Oakland’s status.
Denying our kids access to classroom education is criminal. It’s to deny science, it’s to deny basic rights, it’s to promote systemic divide and the continued gap between the have and the have nots.