San Diego Unified Will Keep Campuses Closed When School Starts Aug. 31

Speaker 1: 00:00 After months of grappling with the vexing challenge of reopening schools in a pandemic San Diego unified shutdown, the idea of returning to classrooms for now the school year will start as the last one finished online. Joining me to examine the details of this decision is KPBS education reporter Joe Hong, Joe. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. We'll start with the decision itself. It was made in conjunction with the LA school district in instruction. We'll start on August 31st as originally planned, but what were some of the factors cited preventing students and teachers from going back into classrooms now? Speaker 2: 00:34 So the two main things that a district cited were the rising infection rates. Um, they want to see a consistent drop in case numbers before reopening schools. And the second component was testing capacity. Um, the districts don't feel like that the local governments are providing enough COVID tests to safely reopen. Ideally you want to have on demand testing for both students and staff. I spoke with Richard Berrera who's on the school board, and here's what he had to say. Speaker 3: 01:06 The countries that we see schools reopening are countries that have brought the virus under control until we do that as a society, we're going to continue to be in this situation where schools are having to balance risks, that we shouldn't be trying to balance. Speaker 1: 01:24 And how many students are affected by this decision and our students at charter schools in the same boat. Speaker 2: 01:30 Yeah. So Ella unified in San Diego unified are, uh, the two biggest and it's more than 700,000 students are going to be affected by this decision, both at traditional schools, as well as charter schools, Speaker 1: 01:45 Some other local districts have made similar decisions already. Is it likely most will follow San Diego Unified's lead on, Speaker 2: 01:53 Uh, we're sort of across the spectrum right now. I mean, between San Diego unified and Ella unified, just geographically there's, uh, orange County, uh, where that school district has, you know, is pushing forward with reopening and is not even a requiring masks. So there's really no sort of way to tell where all of these districts are going to land. Speaker 1: 02:17 Now, this obviously will have a direct impact on jobs, the San Diego economy, the prospect of parents returning to work or trying to work from home if possible. Uh, it seems too soon to really understand all the implications of this decision, right? Speaker 2: 02:30 Yeah, that's right. But I think educators right now, they're really, they're really emphasizing the fact that opening schools really is the foundation to effectively rebooting the economy. And so if we want to reopen schools, it's really going to take a community effort to lower these infection rates, uh, through social distancing and, you know, just kind of going back to where we were, uh, in the earlier months of this pandemic. Now this by two of the nation's largest school districts goes directly against the insistence by president Trump and education, secretary Betsy DeVos to reopen classrooms immediately, they threatened her withhold federal funding. Is that a major concern for local districts and making this decision? Yeah. So look, I think educators right now are really focused on listening to the experts and the scientists to figure out when to reopen schools and that political pressure doesn't seem like something that's gonna really work. Speaker 2: 03:30 Um, just because student safety and teacher safety is what comes first and federal funding really makes up about 10% of overall school funding. So it wouldn't be a huge hit for San Diego unified. And again, uh, when you compare that to the risk to public health and safety, it's, it's, you know, not even really a question for them now, the district is upfront about how disappointing this is for everybody. Uh, what are they saying about when it might be possible to return to the classroom in some way? Right? So at San Diego unified, they've teamed up with UC San Diego and public health experts there to sort of come up with a localized plan for when it'll be safe to reopen, because, you know, as we all know, there's guidances coming from the federal government, the state government and local County governments, and it can be tough to sort of reconcile all that. So, uh, by August 10th, uh, the team at San Diego unified in partnership with UCLA should have a better idea of when the schools will be able to reopen. Um, and if not at the very least they'll have a better understanding of what needs to happen before schools can reopen what case numbers need to look like, what hospitalization numbers need to look like and things like that. I've been speaking with KPBS education reporter, Joe Hong. Thanks, Joe. Thank you.