‘An embarrassing day for San Francisco’

Public health officials have offered a path to reopen since September, including access to small groups of students most at risk in schools.

More than 100 private schools have reopened in the city, with almost 16,000 students returning to classes full or part time, said Herrera.

Still, “no SFUSD student set foot in his 21 schools in 327 days to receive face-to-face classes,” according to the process.

The process addresses whether the district has created a specific Learning and Reopening Continuity Plan, as required by state law. Herrera claims that the district’s plan is vague, with plans that include “rethinking time and space” for classroom teaching.

It is a plan for a plan, he said.

Superintendent Vincent Matthews said Herrera’s claims are without merit.

“We have an absolutely comprehensive plan,” he said. “We are reevaluating different parts of the plan, but the plan is still there.”

Matthews said on Wednesday that the district has a comprehensive panel with steps needed to reopen it. He said the district is ready to reopen the first schools for younger and at-risk students, but the final stage of the plan is missing: an agreement with the teachers’ union and other union bodies.

He added that the process was a distraction.

“It doesn’t help when we’re all in this together,” he said. “Activating those of us who are trying to solve this doesn’t help at all.”

The district teachers’ union also criticized the action.

“United Educators (of San Francisco) is very disappointed that the city has chosen to attack instead of supporting the school district,” said President Susan Solomon.

The legal challenge was one of many across the country about reopening schools, but the only one involving a city suing a school district. In other cases, parents have sued districts or the state or labor unions to prevent schools from reopening.

“We are in a pandemic situation that occurs once in a century that has created some challenges never seen before for our public education system,” said John Affeldt, a lawyer at Public Advocates, a civil rights law firm. “Unfortunately, at the moment, many of our society and our political leaders are frozen in terms of figuring out how to move on.”

It is not known whether the courts will rule on the reopening of schools in the city.

“Courts don’t want to go into the business of being education overseers” and “are often deferential to the decisions of public school boards,” said Bill Koski, Stanford law professor specializing in educational law.

“But this is both a public health issue” and an educational issue, said Koski. “Courts can be more comfortable entering public health waters.”

Steve Sugarman, a law professor at UC Berkeley, said the limited scope of the process – seeking only a more specific plan, rather than a court order to reopen schools – is an issue that the courts are likely to be able to address, but may not accomplish a lot.

“The first instance judge can tell the school district to come up with a plan. … It’s a first step, ”said Sugarman. But “it still depends on whether the union agrees to send teachers back,” he said.

Still, San Francisco’s parents, city officials and others applauded the process, saying they are irritated and frustrated by the lack of clear communication and the details needed to get the school back up and running.

Matthews told families recently that elementary and high schools are unlikely to reopen this school year.

“I’m glad the city is suing them,” said mother Joya Pramanik, whose daughter is a sophomore at Lowell High School. “Our children are suffering and this is going to be a scar in their lives.”

Mayor London Breed is increasingly impatient with the district’s pace of reopening to students and has supported the process, although her educational counselor, Jenny Lam, is on the school board and is now a defendant in the case.

“This is not the path we would have chosen, but nothing matters more now than putting our children back in school,” said Breed in a statement. “The city has provided resources and staff to prepare our school facilities and support our educators’ tests.”

To help families and students in difficulty, the city sponsored face-to-face learning centers in community centers to help vulnerable students navigate distance learning, but these centers were run by community organizations and after school.

School council president Gabriela López said on Wednesday that the city had not helped the district enough with teacher testing and vaccinations, despite requests. Health officials do not require vaccines for schools to reopen, but López and Matthews suggested that schools would not reopen without them. She said the city is “doing politics”, which does not help with the reopening of schools.

“This is an embarrassing day for San Francisco,” said López.

However, just a month ago, San Francisco authorities announced a partnership with the school district to offer tests to teachers, starting at the district office and then expanding to other locations, with funding provided by the city.

While Matthews criticized the city’s lack of help with testing and vaccines on Wednesday, a month earlier, he thanked the city for its experience and additional resources.

The city-funded program began testing teachers and other staff in January, but suspended it after concerns were raised about the accuracy rate of the test provider, Curative. The neighborhood is looking for another company to do the tests, with guidance and support from the city.

Meanwhile, public schools in San Francisco are seeing a significant learning loss, especially among students of color and those from low-income families, although López recently refused to address this, saying that students “are learning more about their families and their cultures, spending more time with each other. “

National and state health officials are increasingly asking classrooms to bring students back, due to the negative impact of distance learning, including academic declines and mental health problems.

Many public schools in neighboring counties have been open for months, with little or no school transmission.

Governor Gavin Newsom also asked schools to reopen, saying they can do it safely.

“We have many, many districts with schools open and able to do so safely,” he said, adding that teacher vaccination is not necessary to bring students back to school, which the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Diseases repeated on Wednesday. “We can safely reopen schools while we process vaccination prioritization for our teachers.”