San Diego Unified Announces In-Person Sessions For Students With Learning Loss

Speaker 1: 00:00 In his COVID-19 update, governor Gavin Newsome today, introduce new monitoring guidelines to inform the state's reopening strategy. Instead of County is being monitored by several criteria to be on or off a watch list. Now, case rates and positivity rates will be the leading indicators measured for color coded tears were introduced from purple indicating the most spread of the virus to yellow, with minimal spread. Speaker 2: 00:30 But the purpose, our emphasis in terms of how we're approaching this is we believe this is much more simple, uh, much more transparent, uh, easily monitored by individuals, not just, uh, by business, uh, business representatives, uh, but also by County and state health officers. Speaker 1: 00:49 As of today, San Diego is listed in the red category indicating substantial spread state officials say a new website will be online soon to guide counties on how much reopening will be allowed. According to which tier a County is in as a sign of San Diego's largest school district is beginning the process of reopening San Diego unified announced yesterday that it will offer in person classes starting late next month to some students struggling academically. The list of students who can take advantage of the small in person classes include some special needs students and those experiencing learning loss. But the district says the in-person classes will include a limited number of students and will take place by appointment. Only joining me is Richard Berrera vice president of the San Diego unified school board, and Richard, welcome to the program. Thanks so much, Maureen. Now San Diego unified announced that it would be conducting remote learning classes for at least the first part of this school year. Why has the district decided to move to in-person classes for some students? Speaker 3: 01:57 Maureen, what we've been trying to do the entire time is balance the obvious concerns over the spread of the coronavirus in our community. And how do we protect the health and safety of students and staff with the obvious understanding that for really all students being back in school in person is much better situation. And for some of our students, it is critical that we provide in person learning. And so this first group of students, what we're thinking of as phase one of our reopening plan, it's about a little over 10% of the students in our district. So it's about 12,000 students, all elementary school students. And these are the students who we believe are most in need of having in-person instruction. And so that includes, like you said, students with certain special needs where either assessment needs to take place in person or delivery of, and their individualized education plans needs to take place in person, but also homeless students, uh, students in foster care, students who teachers identify as struggling at home. Speaker 3: 03:12 And we are identifying students who struggled in their end of term report card in the spring and who were concerned are behind in their learning. And so we want to bring those students onto campus as well. So we see this as a first phase, we worked with a team of scientists that you CSD to give us some clear direction about how we can start to think about reopening it, given the conditions and the viruses in San Diego County. We know that progress is being made countywide, which is a great sign. It means that we as San Diego ones are doing what we should be doing to comply with social distancing, wearing our masks, starting to bring the spread of the virus down. We're now off of the state's watch list. All of that is encouraging, but we also know that we're continuing to be in a very precarious situation Speaker 1: 04:06 Is the idea that the in person classes would be an occasional sort of boost for the students and that they would continue remote classes at home. Speaker 3: 04:15 So all of the students that are in this first grouping will be, you know, starting on Monday as with all students in our district will be assigned to a class with a teacher. They will be participating in the online learning along with the rest of their class, but teachers individually will make arrangements with parents to bring students onto campus. And what that looks like could be very different for each student. It could mean coming in for, you know, a specific service. It could be, you know, spending a lot of time in the classroom every day. And it really depends on first of all, what the teacher and the principals at the school believe that student needs. And then what arrangements we can make, you know, with the parents, what transportation arrangements that we can make. So it will look differently for each student. Speaker 1: 05:07 What kinds of safety measures is San Diego unified taking for the students and the teachers? Speaker 3: 05:12 You know, because we look at this as our first phase of reopening all of the safety measures that we would have in place where we to fully reopened a will certainly be in place for this first group of students. So that means personal protective equipment, you know, for all adults and, and students who are working together, everybody needs to be wearing a mask, uh, you know, the entire time that they're on campus, uh, we need to be doing the deep cleaning, you know, of the classrooms. We need to make sure that the classrooms are properly ventilated. Uh, and that may mean installing extra, uh, filters in the air conditioning systems, or it may mean, uh, opening up outdoor spaces to be working with these students. So all of those precautions that would need to be in place for all of our students, if we're able, you know, hopefully to bring everybody back, we'll be in place for this first group of students, Speaker 1: 06:11 Other private schools, and some public schools will be opening very soon for, in person classes for all their students. Why isn't San Diego unified? Speaker 3: 06:22 Uh, we believe that that is a much too risky to do. We think of this as you know, red, yellow, and green zone. And we're just now moving out of the red zone into a dark yellow zone. I think we should describe it as that. So we still have 80 plus cases per a hundred thousand in our County. We don't have anywhere near the testing capacity. I, that would allow us to, you know, preemptively identify students and staff with the virus. We're just developing the capacity to do a investigation and contact tracing, which is absolutely critical. So what we've said is when we're in a yellow zone, we need to do this carefully and in phases. And we have seen Marine examples around the country of, uh, you know, schools or districts that reopen too quickly. And the result was a large number of students and staff contracting the virus and the schools needing to be shut down. We don't want to go through that starting and stopping situation in our district. And we believe that by proceeding cautiously and in phases, we're actually accelerating the time that we can bring all of our students back. Speaker 1: 07:38 Been speaking with Richard Barrera, vice president of the San Diego unified school board. And Richard, thank you so much. Speaker 3: 07:44 Thank you, Maureen.