Online learning for most California schools

Governor Gavin Newsom entered the debate on reopening schools for the fall, declaring on Friday that those in counties on the state watch list for disturbing COVID-19 outbreaks should begin fall instruction without students in classrooms and instead teach them remotely online.

Newsom has come under increasing pressure to keep classrooms closed throughout the fall as the pandemic in California increases and more and more districts are delaying plans to reopen classrooms and resort to the “distance” online learning imposed on them during spring blocks to stop the spread of the coronavirus. .

“Safety is critical and ultimately will determine how we educate our children,” Newsom said at a press conference at noon. “Schools must provide meaningful instruction during this pandemic, whether they are physically open or not. Our students, our teachers, our staff, and certainly our parents prefer classroom instruction, but only if it can be done safely. “

Newsom said schools can reopen classrooms “when the counties we are monitoring are off our monitoring list for 14 days.” He noted that 32 of California’s 58 counties are on that watch list, including most of those in the greater Bahia area, where the only exceptions on Friday were San Mateo and Santa Cruz.

The California Teachers Association wrote Newsom last week, State Superintendent Tony Thurmond and legislative leaders telling them “it is clear that communities and school districts have not been close to reaching the threshold for a safe return to in-person learning.”

The letter came a day after President Donald Trump urged schools to reopen classrooms, signaling to other countries that they have done so without much trouble.

Newsom’s Friday announcement came after a week in which waves of school districts across the state postponed plans to reopen classrooms to students, including the state’s two largest districts, Los Angeles and San Diego, and in the Bay Area, San Francisco, Oakland, San José and Santa Clara.

In Marin County, the public health department and county office of education urged districts to suspend classroom instruction until at least after Labor Day, citing “concerns and anxiety around returning to the classroom.”

However, those concerns arise amid other concerns about the continuation of the online-only learning experiment that was poor for many students in the spring after the growing pandemic led to a state order to stay home. Many districts were not prepared to teach children online, many teachers struggled with technology, and many students and their families lacked computers and the Internet at home.

A study this month by the Los Angeles Unified School District found that during the spring, the district’s most disadvantaged students, including black, Latino, and English students, participated in online learning at lower rates than their peers and lost the learning that could take years to recover.

Newsom, the father of four school-age children, is well aware of those problems, and in April, when the state shutdown reduced infections, the governor even suggested that the children return to class in July to make up for the learning loss. The state budget bills urged districts to resume classroom instruction as much as possible.

Others also point out that because children are least likely to have a serious disease from COVID-19 (none in California has died from it) and tend not to spread the disease, the learning loss lost outweighs the health risks. of the children who return to the classroom.