Dozens of elementary schools around the Bay Area have been approved to reopen classrooms as the list of waivers granted throughout California doubled to more than 200 in the past week.
Since Sunnyvale Christian became the first in the Bay Area to welcome pupils back to classrooms closed by state and local officials in the spring in response to the coronavirus pandemic, more schools have been approved to reopen in Santa Clara County as well as Marin, Contra Costa and San Mateo counties.
In Santa Clara County, where two of 62 schools and districts that had requested them had been granted reopening waivers a week ago, several more have since been approved. They include Campbell Union School District, Luther Burbank School District, Creekside, Campbell Christian, Milpitas Christian and South Peninsula Hebrew Day School.
In San Mateo County, 18 schools now have a green light for in-class instruction. Marin County has 13 schools approved for reopening, and Contra Costa County four.
“They’re stoked,” said Isabel Mason, a teacher and community engagement manager at Wilkinson School near Half Moon Bay, on how students who have been studying online for the past week, as they did last spring, feel about returning to the campus. “They’re the number one proponents of this.”
Four privates schools in Contra Costa County have received waivers to reopen: Ygnacio Valley Christian, CORE Education Academy, Hilltop Christian and The Athenian.
Alameda County, which had not been considering waivers, on Wednesday announced a process for schools to apply. The county asked all schools to develop and post a plan for eventual return to in-class learning, regardless of whether they plan to seek waivers.
Statewide, 220 schools have been approved for waivers after consultation with the California Department of Public Health. Nine were denied after consultation with the state, all of them in San Bernardino County.
Eight of the approved San Mateo County schools will reopen after Labor Day, others will open classrooms later.
Reopening schools has been hotly debated as cases surged this summer in California and much of the country, giving state leaders, health officials, parents and teachers pause over plans to return kids to classrooms. Others have argued the risk of reopening is low and outweighed by the harm done to children’s education and emotional well-being and to working parents who can’t stay home for online class.
After state leaders urged schools to plan for reopening in the fall with social distancing, mask wearing and other hygiene measures, Gov. Gavin Newsom in July announced that schools in much of the state where the virus continues to spread must start the fall school year with online instruction.
Newsom allowed however that elementary schools, whose younger students are at lower risk from the virus and have more difficulty with online instruction, can apply for waivers to reopen through local health departments.
Newsom a week ago announced a new color-coded ranking in which counties in the “purple tier” with widespread outbreaks — including seven of the nine Bay Area counties — must have waivers to reopen elementary schools. Counties must remain in each tier for at least three weeks as conditions improve. Schools located in the less restrictive “red tier” counties — San Francisco and Napa in the Bay Area — can reopen after their county has been in that tier for at least two weeks.
Wilkinson School, a small private K-8 program in San Mateo County, will only be allowed to resume class for its elementary grades, but Mason said the seventh and eighth-graders have been doing well online and might be approved to come to campus for some socially-distanced, non-instructional activities.
For the younger grades, Mason said Wilkinson, a private school of 45 students, will be doing an unusual program with the classrooms set up outside with tents for greater ventilation, something that can reduce virus transmission. The mild coastal weather should make that reasonably comfortable most of the year, but if it rains or gets unusually hot or cold, they still have online distance learning as an option for those days.
Recesses will only be one class at a time, without physical contact or sharing balls or other playthings. Mason said that for the younger children, in-person instruction is important both for learning and socializaiton.
“It’s social and emotional learning,” Mason said.
Patricia Love, a spokeswoman for the San Mateo County Office of Education, said more than half a dozen schools are in the pipeline for approval.
“People are continuing to apply — we just got another one this morning,” Love said. “But we’re turning them around pretty quickly.”
