Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday announced a $ 2 billion plan to get California schools to start allowing their youngest students to return to school in February.
“As a father of very young children, in personal education – there is no substitute for that. It is much more difficult for a 4-year-old to focus on a device than a 14-year-old, ”said Newsom.
Although some districts were opened when coronavirus cases declined in the early fall, most of California’s 6 million public school students have learned remotely since the pandemic began last March.
Newsom has already called teachers and school officials next in line to receive vaccination against coronavirus, behind health professionals and residents of long-term care facilities.
Under Newsom’s plan, schools that reopen would receive an average of $ 450 per student, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The governor’s $ 2 billion budget proposal would channel money into Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), testing and other safety measures, with a focus on kindergarten through second grade.
Priority will also be given to students with special needs, those in orphanages and those who are homeless, along with schools with many low-income students or English students.
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Parents still have the option of keeping their children in remote education if their schools are reopened.
The state will also launch a public school transmission database after Californians complained that the state provided little information about school reopening or infection rates among students.
The plan must be submitted to the state Legislative Assembly as an amendment to the proposed budget.
California faces record highs in cases of COVID-19 and hospitalizations. Facilities in Southern California are running out of bed space and the health leadership is beginning to discuss the possibility of having to ration care.
But as public health officials ensure that schools have a relatively low level of transmission, Newsom said his new plan would go into action when counties cut their cases to less than 28 per 100,000 residents, four times the rate California would allow. before schools reopened without layoffs. The current state average is 93 new cases per 100,000 residents.
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Californians attacked Newsom for not doing enough to push for schools to reopen, especially after the governor acknowledged that his four children, aged 4 to 11, were returning to the classroom in a hybrid format at their private school.
Meanwhile, Republicans continue to collect signatures to oust the governor and won a $ 600,000 increase to help their efforts earlier this week. According to a document released on Tuesday, Irvine consulting firm Prov 3: 9, LLC donated $ 500,000 to the recall efforts, while Douglas Leone, managing partner of the Menlo Park-based venture capital firm , Sequoia Capital, and his wife Patricia Perkins-Leone donated a $ 100,000 deal.
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The implementation of the plan may face obstacles with the teachers’ unions and their collective bargaining agreements. State lawmakers earlier this month introduced legislation that would force schools in California counties to open as soon as they moved from the more restrictive “purple” layer to the “red” layer. Current policy makes reopening schools at less restrictive levels optional.