Unions representing San Francisco teachers and other city school district officials announced their conditions to return to face-to-face instruction on Friday, a proposal they plan to present to school officials.
Susan Solomon, president of United Educators of San Francisco, which represents 6,500 teachers and educators across the city, said teachers and staff would return to face-to-face instruction in the state’s red layer of vaccine reopening – or the orange layer if the teacher and employee vaccinations are not available.
The reopening proposal was not linked to specific dates.
The announcement comes amid increasing pressure on the district and unions representing school officials to reopen face-to-face learning for the more than 52,000 students in the district. The issue came up when city prosecutor Dennis Herrera sued the school district and the council on Wednesday to force them to create a specific plan to reopen.
The following day, Mayor London Breed gave a press conference with other officials to pressure the union and the district to make a deal. Breed said students’ loss of learning and mental health make the matter urgent. The district’s own research shows that black, Latino and Asian students, as well as those from low-income families, have lost significant academic terrain compared to white, wealthier students during the pandemic.
The reopening of schools is guided by the state’s color code system. According to state guidelines, the red layer indicates “substantial” spread of the coronavirus and the orange layer indicates “moderate” spread of the virus. At the moment, San Francisco is in the purple layer, or “generalized”. Schools in purple layer counties can open to grades K-6 if their “average adjusted case rate” is less than 25 cases per 100,000 inhabitants and they present a security plan.
Local, state and national health officials said it was safe for schools to reopen with due care. Very few cases of transmission have been tracked in schools in the bay area and elsewhere.
Solomon made the announcement shortly before saying he would present demands for the union’s reopening to San Francisco Unified School District administrators at the negotiating table.
Teachers said their offer also requires the district to ensure that virus testing, social distance, disinfection, protective equipment and improved ventilation are available in schools. It was not clear how many of these requirements were met. The union had already demanded the installation of bathroom covers in washbasins and air monitors in classrooms.
“Most of our (concerns) have been resolved,” said Solomon. “There are some other areas where we would like to see movement, including testing and availability of vaccines.”
Currently, all counties are vaccinating essential health workers and residents and long-term workers. The state also allows counties to give vaccines to people over 65, education and daycare workers, emergency service workers and those working in food and agriculture, if vaccinated. Some counties started vaccinating teachers, but fell back due to a shortage of vaccines.
Salomão said that the union and the district “were not far apart” in their proposals for reopening and stressed that the two sides meet daily.
The school district did not respond to requests for comment.
The pressure on the district and unions increased on Thursday, when a tearful race was with children holding signs that said “I miss my friends” and urged all sides to work together to open schools.
The organizers of the event – Decrease the Distance – announced the creation of a petition across the city and pushed for the school board and the teachers’ union to reach an agreement by February 18 on the conditions for schools to reopen.
Breed joined state senator Scott Wiener, who said he was upset because the day after the school council vote to rename 44 schools, the district announced that elementary and high schools would probably not reopen this school year.
“I have always been a huge supporter and fan of this school district,” he said. “My frustration is what I see as a defeatist attitude.”
Ted Lempert, president of Children Now, a state child advocacy group, has been paying attention to what’s going on in San Francisco, as well as elsewhere in California, and believes that growing pressure – from parents and politicians – can finally stop the standoff being maintained most California public schools have closed.
“I have been involved in education and advocacy policies for a long time and I have never seen parents so enthusiastic about a policy at any time or place,” he said. “It is having an impact. Ideally, the focus would not be to blame this politician or the school official, but to get schools open. But it is clear that the pressure is having an impact. “
Lempert said schools are reopening safely in other parts of the country, while many districts in California appear to be going nowhere.
District officials said they were ready to reopen younger, at-risk students by the end of January, but were unable to reach an agreement with the union.
San Francisco’s public schools have been closed since mid-March, but more than 15,000 students from private schools are back in class. Parents of public school students who spent nearly a year with their children camped in the classroom said they were frustrated.
“Private and parish schools have safely opened,” said Jonathan Alloy, who has two children – Samuel, 9, and Rebecca, 8 – at Commodore Sloat Elementary School. “The children of families with money for private school are getting a good education.”
Alloy said the union’s offer to return to the classroom when the color of the pandemic level improves has “many warnings and no sense of time.”
As he spoke, Rebecca was skipping rope with her virtual classmates in front of the classroom computer, as part of her PE class, and Samuel was writing a book report.
“The closings are having a huge negative impact from the point of view of mental health and socialization,” said Alloy. “It’s time for them to do something.”
But mother Laurel Paul, with two children in two high schools in San Francisco, said she understood teachers’ reluctance.
“We are all frustrated and ready to end the pandemic,” she said. “I don’t blame the parents for being upset. But I don’t see good choices. The wave is scary. The variants are scary. I am happy that the union is pushing for security ”.
Pretending that the pandemic will simply go away, she said, is an illusion.
“I wonder if some of those parents who want schools to reopen now have found a secret door to Narnia,” she said.
Jill Tucker and Michael Cabanatuan c, editors of the San Francisco Chronicleassigned to this report.
Steve Rubenstein is a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @SteveRubeSF