With Santa Clara County again in the state's most restrictive purple tier, Palo Alto Unified can no longer fully open its middle and high schools as planned, but the district is moving forward with alternatives for in-person activities.
The district has asked Palo Alto and Gunn high schools to come up with ideas for small group, on-campus activities, both academic and nonacademic, that would start on Jan 25. Schools are allowed to serve small cohorts of students in person under state guidelines though they have to wait until the county is out of the purple tier for 14 days to reopen schools.
At Tuesday's school board meeting, district leadership expressed a desire to think creatively about how to support high school students in-person and to offer on-campus activities to as many students as safely possible. Superintendent Don Austin said he's looking to the high schools to develop the small group programs, and further details about the offerings will come from the high schools rather than the district office. Board members urged staff to think outside the box and experiment, whether it's having a teacher lead a class outdoors or allowing students to complete distance learning classes in physical classrooms.
"I do feel strongly that our ability to get secondary students on to campus — our efforts to do that are really critical," said board member Todd Collins. "There are both mental health and academic engagement reasons that it's really important, even if they're coming in for nonacademic purposes. Especially if things start moving in the right direction in the second semester, we really need to figure out how to take advantage of the windows of opportunity."
Students who previously said they wanted to return for hybrid instruction will have priority for the small group activities, which could take place two days a week, staff said.
The district is also planning to allow sixth grade students to return for in-person instruction in March if conditions allow for it. No further specifics about this plan were discussed on Tuesday.
If public health conditions improve in the second semester and teachers begin to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, Collins said the district should also consider bringing back more elementary school students for face-to-face instruction as many as five days a week.
Several board members expressed support for new state legislation, Assembly Bill 10, which would require public schools to reopen in stages by early spring depending on the public health data in their counties. The emergency legislation was recently introduced by Assembly member Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, and requires a two-thirds approval to pass.
"Our political leadership has lumped together schools and other sorts of activities. The idea that we want to treat all these things together misses the point that having schools in person and as normal as possible is a critical function for our whole society," said board Vice President Ken Dauber.
Palo Alto Unified is already planning for summer school and how to use those months to alleviate capacity for classes next fall, when staff anticipates there will still be restrictions on how many students can be in a classroom. Austin said he will soon bring a recommendation to the board to quadruple the budget for summer school if it can take place in person.
In other business Tuesday, the board swore in newly elected board member Jesse Ladomirak and the two reelected incumbents, Collins and Jennifer DiBrienza. The board unanimously appointed Shounak Dharap as board president for 2021 and Dauber as vice president.
Find comprehensive coverage on the Midpeninsula's response to the new coronavirus by Palo Alto Online, the Mountain View Voice and the Almanac here.
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Under new plan, high schoolers could return to campuses for small group activities in January - Palo Alto Online
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