CONCORD — With 1,000 students already leaving the district during the coronavirus pandemic, Mount Diablo Unified is eager to begin reopening its schools, but it first needs agreements with its unions.
The district had made plans to open in January under a hybrid model, but a winter surge in coronavirus cases prompted Superintendent Adam Clark last month to kick the plans down the road. The district will rely on Contra Costa County’s coronavirus numbers to determine whether it can bring students back to school in small groups.
It’s a step forward for a district that has seen consequences for not yet abandoning distance learning during the 2020-21 school year.
Because public school districts receive funding for salaries based on student enrollment, future layoffs are a serious possibility with the drop in enrollment, Clark announced at a school board meeting Wednesday. Any layoffs would be based on staff seniority in reverse order.
“Like it or not, layoffs will affect every one of our bargaining groups when you lose a thousand kids,” Clark said. The district usually has around 29,000 enrolled students, according to its website.
The school board on Wednesday unanimously approved the district’s reopening plans, what they called a living document, that will be subject to change at any time if the board wishes.
If labor unions agree, the district will be able to reopen kindergarten through sixth grade after Contra Costa County remains at fewer than 25 daily coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents for five consecutive days. For seventh grade and up, the threshold will be fewer than seven daily cases per 100,000 residents across the same length of time.
As of Thursday morning, Contra Costa County’s adjusted seven-day case rate per 100,000 is 20.6, which means kindergarten through sixth grade could open very soon at Mount Diablo schools once the district and labor groups get on the same page.
Eight of the eighteen school districts in the county have now opted to reopen in some capacity this school year. The San Ramon Valley Unified School District decided this week to bring students at some schools back for in-person learning.
Clark noted Wednesday night that a hybrid model — which would bring students back to campus part of the time and in limited groups — would counter student isolation and depression, with a complete reopening further ahead.
“From where I sit, looking into the future, there should not be a reason why we can’t come back in the fall and have all kids who want to be back,” Clark said.
People who spoke at the board’s Wednesday night meeting were split on whether to reopen, launching familiar arguments for and against bringing students back to school.
“It’s time we restore hope for our own students and families in our district before we lose more families to more progressive and action-oriented school districts and private schools,” said Lindsey Leaf, who said distance learning has taken a “social and emotional toll” on her 12-year-old child who attends Strandwood Elementary in Pleasant Hill.
Denise Rodezno, a kindergarten teacher in the district and the parent of a student at Sequoia Middle School in Pleasant Hill, said she didn’t think other parents really understood how many families in the district are directly dealing with COVID-19 cases right now.
“If we were starting in-person learning next week, the truth of the matter is that you don’t know you have COVID until you have COVID — why put everyone at risk?” Rodezno asked.
Another speaker, Ignacia Preciado, praised distance learning as a technological step forward in 21st-century education, saying that bringing students back in person would “disproportionately affect the students and families of Bay Point and the Monument (corridor, in Concord) — those communities that have been hit hardest.”
Shira Steinbeck, the mother of an 11-year-old in Pleasant Hill, recited a poem during the meeting that she had written outlining the grim realities of distance learning.
“Keep sitting there, son, wasting the day, while our district and unions bargain away,” Steinbeck said.
