Gov. Gavin Newsom presented a $2 billion proposal for financial incentives Wednesday to prod school districts to bring back elementary school students for in-person instruction, starting in mid-February.
School districts would receive extra funding — from $450 to $750 per student — if they agreed to a timetable for reopening schools, a rigorous regimen of testing both students and staff for the virus, and a strict health and safety plan that teachers and employee unions would have to consent to. Newsom said more details would be available with the state budget next week.
Districts would receive a minimum of $450 for every student in the district, plus as much as $750 per student, based on the Local Control Funding Formula. It provides extra money for English learners, homeless, foster and low-income students.
Districts would receive the funding if they offered in-person instruction from transitional kindergarten to 2nd grade in the first phase, starting Feb. 15, and for 3rd to 6th graders in the second phase, a month later. Districts would get full funding, regardless of how many parents decided to continue with distance learning. They would also have to agree to bring back small cohorts of students of all ages with the most needs, including homeless and foster children and students with disabilities, whom Newsom said have been disproportionately affected by the shift to distance learning.
Meanwhile, district and county superintendents, school advocates and union leaders basically have mixed reactions to Newsom’s plan for in-person instruction with hope, enthusiasm and skepticism.
Many educators and advocates praised Newsom for making schools a priority, including his preference for pushing up teachers and other school employees in the waiting line for Covid vaccinations. But some superintendents questioned the feasibility of ramping up extensive testing within weeks — an idea that had been pushed by the California Teachers Union but not studied seriously by school districts.
The administration will release more information next week, and the Legislature, which must approve the spending, will then have its say over the details. Meanwhile, there is hope on New Year’s Eve among parents that at least young children may be back in class by early spring.
In Woodland, the school district is currently still in phase one of their five-phase plan to re-open schools safely. They have not been able to move into phase 2, which is defined as targeted in-person learning, due to the county’s placement in the highest purple tier. During a November school board meeting, it was revealed that the district has tied its five-phase plan to California’s four-tiered, color-coded system. A move down in tiers would mean a move up in phases.
The students targeted in phase two include Special Education Special Day Classes, English language learners or newcomers to the district, full-day preschool programs, migrant education students identified by highest needs, students with technological barriers such as homeless or foster students, and remote rural area students, and small cohorts of social-emotional supports.
For phase three, only K-6 grade students would be participating in a true hybrid or blended learning model, meaning in-person learning. Middle and high school students in the district would continue learning virtually, but with a study hall model with in-person opportunities.
“The Governor’s comments provided some optimism for a path to get schools re-opened and back to in-person learning,” Woodland Superintendent Tom Pritchard stated. “I am encouraged by some of the resources the Governor proposed that may be coming to school districts, but oftentimes, the devil is in the details so we are waiting for further guidance from the California Department of Education, the California Department of Public Health, and the Governor’s Office.”
“In terms of WJUSD’s plan for re-opening, our staff and trustees will continue our discussions about how best to serve the students of Woodland,” Pritchard continued. “Should we follow the Governor’s ideas, our plans would accelerate if we can overcome our largest hurdle which is the ability to test all staff and students weekly. Currently, we do not have the resources (staff or funds) to test approximately 10,000 people weekly. As I have stated before, our goal is to get our students back to in-person learning as soon as possible as long as we can do so in a safe manner. The Governor’s proposal certainly helps us take a step closer to reaching that goal.”
Newsom has said his strategy is consistent with his administration’s position, which since summer has permitted waivers for TK through sixth grades for schools that are in the state’s Tier 1 “‘purple” list. As of this week, the state had approved 1,732 such waivers, many of them to private and parochial schools.
Woodland Christian and Holy Rosary Elementary are two private schools that have been granted waivers.
Under the new plan, districts with schools that already have physically reopened can continue to operate but they would need to meet the new testing requirements and have an updated safety plan negotiated with employee unions to receive the additional funding.
Asked during a press briefing whether the new funding would be enough to entice unions to agree to return within the next two months, Newsom said that teachers’ love of teaching would provide the motivation. “The greatest incentive is the inspiration that spark that led someone to want to contribute in such a profound and dignified way by educating the minds of the next generation,” he said. “So I don’t know that that needs to be much more impetus than that.”
But he also pointed out that districts already have received nearly $7 billion in federal CARES Act money. Much of that funding must be K-12 spent by Dec. 31, however. Newsom did not mention the $6.8 billion for K-12 that California would also receive in 2021 from the Covid relief package that Congress approved before Christmas and President Trump signed into law this week.
It’s unclear whether the additional funding, safety and testing requirements would also help persuade teachers to return to school once they have been vaccinated for Covid. To meet the Feb. 15 reopening date for TK-2, school districts would need to complete labor negotiations and submit a safety plan by Feb. 1 for the first phase. Those deadlines would be subject to the state of the pandemic and infections rates that have soared this month.
In a statement Wednesday, CTA President E. Toby Boyd withheld support pending more information while praising Newsome for “finally recognizing what CTA, for months, has been advocating” for the return to in-person instruction: tighter safety standards, rigorous and consistent testing, data collection and transparency. But he reiterated his opposition to reopening any schools that fall in the purple tier. That position is at odds with Newsom’s proposal. The governor said that data and medical evidence support bringing back students in highly infected regions, as along as strict safety protocols are obeyed. Youngest students are less receptive to the virus, and there has been little transmission among students or to teachers in schools, he said.
Newsom also has been getting considerable pressure from parent groups and some legislators to require school districts to reopen if they met a range of health and safety requirements. Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, who chairs the Assembly Budget Committee, is the lead author of a bill that would require all school districts to adopt plans by March 1 laying out the return of students to school.
But Newsom said he has worked closely with legislative leaders. He singled out Assemblyman Patrick O’Donnell, D-Long Beach, who chairs the Assembly Education Committee and is a co-author of Ting’s Assembly Bill 10, and Sen. Connie Leyva, D-Chino, who chairs the Senate Education Committee.
Newsom would need quick Legislative approval of the $2 billion expenditure, which would be funded by Proposition 98, the formula that determines the portion of the state budget allotted to K-12 and community colleges. Because revenues so far this year have exceeded projections in the budget, despite the pandemic-precipitated recession, Newsom is expected to have a one-time windfall of around $15 billion in Prop. 98 in the next budget, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
In joint statement, superintendents of Los Angeles Unified and six other large urban districts said they welcomed Newsom’s efforts to make the reopening of public school classrooms a priority and would issue a lengthier comment next week. “It will take a coordinated effort at the state and local levels to reopen classrooms as soon as possible while protecting the health and safety of all in the school community,” they said. Sperintendents of San Diego, Long Beach, Fresno, San Francisco, Oakland and Sacramento City unified districts, with 1 million students, also signed on.
John Fensterwald and Loius Freedberg of Edsource contributed to this report.
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Newsom offers $2 billion plan to bring back in-person instruction - Woodland Daily Democrat
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