Tuesday: Lawmakers unveiled a long-negotiated deal for reopening schools, but not everyone is on board.
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Good morning.
Almost exactly a year ago, on March 7, 2020, officials in the Elk Grove Unified School District — Northern California’s largest — announced that schools would close for a week in response to concerns that the novel, unknown coronavirus could spread like wildfire among students and educators.
About a week later, Elk Grove extended the closure, and the state’s four biggest districts announced similar moves, collectively sending more than one million California students home.
It will never not be mind-boggling to look back on those early days of the pandemic. According to this special Saturday California Today from March 14, 2020, Sacramento County, which includes Elk Grove, had 16 confirmed coronavirus cases total at the time.
[Track coronavirus cases, deaths and hospitalizations by California county.]
On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that about 3,500 new Covid-19 cases had been reported over the previous day in the state and the test positivity rate was 2.3 percent — a cause for celebration, compared with where the state was a month ago, he said.
We’ve come a long way.
Mr. Newsom mentioned the promising statistics as he stood inside Elk Grove’s Franklin Elementary School, along with the district’s superintendent and leaders of the State Legislature as they unveiled what they said was the latest — and, ideally, last — sweeping, multibillion-dollar deal aimed at reopening schools.
Here’s what to know about the deal:
How does the plan work?
The plan essentially sets aside money to incentivize public school districts to bring students back into classrooms in stages. The deal involves a total of $6.6 billion: $2 billion in grants that would go toward safety measures such as protective equipment, ventilation upgrades and coronavirus testing. The rest, $4.6 billion, would pay for “expanded learning opportunities,” like tutoring and summer school, as well as expanded mental health services.
Districts would get a share of the $2 billion as long as they offer in-person instruction by the end of the month for children in transitional kindergarten through second grade, as well as high-needs students in all grades.
If schools are in a county that’s been able to move out of the most restrictive purple tier — meaning there are fewer than seven new cases per day per 100,000 residents — that timeline would be accelerated: Districts must reopen all elementary school grades and at least one middle or high school grade by the end of the month, in order to get the funding.
[Catch up on the state’s current reopening framework.]
If districts don’t meet that deadline to start bringing back students, they’ll lose 1 percent of their part of the $2 billion every day that they don’t. If the schools open after May 15, the number will shrink to zero.
Mr. Newsom said that once some groups of students return to schools safely, he’s confident educators and officials will feel more comfortable bringing back more.
“Once you build a cohort,” he said. “you build trust.”
Does the state require teachers to be vaccinated before returning to schools?
Recently, that’s been a sticking point between the governor and the state’s teachers’ unions, who have demanded vaccinations as a condition of returning to what they regard as a potentially hazardous workplace. The governor, meanwhile, has cited federal guidance in saying that schools can safely reopen without teachers being vaccinated.
The bill does not require teachers to be vaccinated before schools reopen. It does, however “codify” the state’s commitment to reserve 10 percent of vaccines for educators. And officials have emphasized they’re trying to speed up inoculations for teachers.
[Read more about the federal government’s recent guidance for reopening schools.]
Does the plan allow for distance learning, even if some students are back in classrooms?
Yes. Districts just have to bring back some students to be eligible for the grants. Some of the money from the $4.6 billion pot can go toward supporting continued distance learning.
[Read more questions and answers about the plan from The Sacramento Bee.]
How do different groups feel about the deal?
Well, that’s always the tricky part.
Although lawmakers have been working for weeks to hammer out a deal that has buy-in from district officials, parents, lawmakers and school employee unions, the announcement on Monday wasn’t exactly met with consensus.
Of course, Mr. Newsom said that the deal represented a promising milestone, a solution developed with input from the bottom up, and that it allowed for continued district-by-district flexibility.
[See more information from the state here, including which districts have reopened schools.]
Lawmakers said the plan recognized the importance of support for educators and students.
“What’s there left to say, except that we have all been working diligently to get to this moment?” Toni Atkins, a leader in the State Senate, said during the news conference Monday announcing the agreement.
Jeff Freitas, president of the powerful California Federation of Teachers, said in a statement that the deal was “a major step” and that he was “encouraged,” but that the union had hoped to see “more robust state level enforcement” of safety rules.
Other groups were less measured.
“This isn’t a breakthrough, it’s a failure,” Pat Reilly, a parent activist with the Oakland-based group Open Schools CA, said in an emailed statement. “Make no mistake, there will still be closed schools and kids left behind a month from now and months afterwards until the governor, legislature or the courts force them open.”
On the opposite side of the debate, Politico reported, the leader of the state’s largest local teachers’ union, the United Teachers of Los Angeles, slammed the deal as “propagating structural racism,” because it could require students, teachers and parents in communities where the spread of the virus is still disproportionately high to take on extra risk.
[Track whether the C.D.C. says it’s safe for schools in your area to reopen based on case counts.]
The idea of using financial incentives to entice districts to bring back their youngest students — which the governor pitched in December — is “deeply flawed,” said the Los Angeles union’s president, Cecily Myart-Cruz.
And The Los Angeles Times’s editorial board called the plan “a true April Fool’s deal,” that won’t ensure that enough of the state’s six million school children get the in-person education they need before the school year is effectively over.
Finally, as my colleague Shawn Hubler noted, the money is modest by California standards. The state spent nearly $100 billion last year on its public school system, and the $2 billion pot will be open to more than 1,000 school districts.
[Read the full text of the bill on the state’s legislative site here.]
Tell us how you feel: Recently, we asked you to send your questions about school reopenings. We still welcome those, but the answers still vary widely across the state, district by district.
So, as the situation continues to shift, if you’re a parent, educator, student or some combination of those, tell us about how you’re feeling.
Are you frustrated with lawmakers? Are you concerned about your safety or your child’s safety? Do you feel like your interim fixes have turned out to be more sustainable than you expected? Email us at CAtoday@nytimes.com.
California Today goes live at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com. Were you forwarded this email? Sign up for California Today here and read every edition online here.
Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, graduated from U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter.
California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.
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