Irvine school board votes to require masks for onsite learning, give families online options for the fall
Irvine’s Board of Education, after reviewing the Irvine Unified School District’s proposed academic models Tuesday until past midnight, voted to approve the recommendations for the 2020-21 school year.
Instruction at all IUSD schools will return on Aug. 20. Elementary school students will have the option of having in-person school, distance learning or a hybrid of the two. Middle school and high school students can choose between doing classwork 100% online or opting for a blend of in-person and distance learning.
“We’re fearful,” said board member Sharon Wallin. “Everyone is fearful right now. We don’t have a crystal ball. We have no idea what’s coming. We do know that we have a responsibility to take care of our students and staff.”
“It’s like a 3-D chessboard with all relatively bad moves,” said board member Ira Glasky. “We’re figuring out the least bad move to keep this game going along.”
A letter issued Tuesday by Reps. Harley Rouda, Linda Sanchez and Katie Porter requested a briefing with board members and county health officials on controversial guidelines released Monday.
Earlier this week, the Los Angeles, San Diego and San Bernardino school districts announced that schools would not reopen campuses. In Orange County, the Anaheim Union High School District and Santa Ana Unified School District also announced plans to do distance learning for the fall.
In June and July, the Irvine Unified School District administered surveys, for both families and staff, to get an idea of how communities were feeling about continuing school in the fall.
Ninety percent of elementary school parents voted in favor of giving families choices.
Approximately 40% of their elementary, middle and high school families preferred the traditional in-person model, with about a third preferring a hybrid model and the rest wanting distance learning.
The staff results were more varied, with 50% of elementary school staff preferring traditional, middle school staff evenly divided with a slight preference for distance learning, and 43% of high school staff preferring a blended model.
But Wallin emphasized that the comfort level with going back to traditional schooling was qualified. Families wanted to know that all safety precautions would be taken on campus.
Before the meeting, the IUSD received over 200 public comments from teachers and parents.
Teri Sorey, president of the Irvine Teachers Assn., expressed teachers’ concerns over their safety.
“We need to be assured that everything possible will be done to supply and train and equip [teachers, as] necessary, for in-person instruction to be safe and manageable, realistic and successful,” she wrote, adding that the result of their own survey showed that teachers preferred everyone onsite wear facial protection.
Orange County Board of Education members said Monday they believe a return to schools is the best course for children, in part, because science has shown youth are not at great risk of contracting COVID-19.
Dr. Bobby Sasson wrote: “I am writing to express a significant concern that I and most of my physician parent colleagues share for the current IUSD reopening plans and are advocating for a scientific approach to ensure our children’s safety learning in the upcoming school year … Given the alarming rise in infections and hospitalizations, we urge IUSD to commence the 2020-21 school year with 100% distance learning taught by our own teachers.”
As of Wednesday, Irvine has a total of 875 cases of the coronavirus, with seven deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.
Dr. Dmitri Portnoy wrote: “The most recent public school’s closure for a relatively short period of time has already demonstrated measurable detrimental effects to the well-being of children and families, unsurprisingly affecting more low-income and minority communities. The benefits of the closure remain unknown and are mostly hypothetical. The facts accumulated by this time tells us that transmission in this age group is low and morbidity and mortality is insignificant to almost nonexistent.
“... For those parents, however, who despite the cumulative medical evidence, feel anxious and uncomfortable sending their children back to school, the option of distance learning should be evaluated.”
Andrew R. Highsmith wrote: “As a father of three children in the Irvine Unified School District and a scholar of public health history in United States, I’m writing to urge you to cancel in-person instruction in all IUSD schools this far ... You have the power to help control the spread of COVID-19 … given the current situation, I believe you have a moral imperative to do so.”
Early in the meeting, board member Paul Bokota asked to move up the discussion about masks.
They understood that many may have been confused by Monday’s O.C. Board of Education recommendation to reopen schools without masks or social distancing.
The IUSD released a statement Tuesday morning: “IUSD is not governed by the O.C. Board of Education and our District will not follow their nonbinding recommendations for the 2020-21 school year.”
The statement noted that the members were guided by Orange County Department of Education (OCDE), County Supt. Dr. Al Mijares and the department’s “Orange County Together: A guide to safely reopening schools in the COVID-19 era.”
The guide stresses the importance of social distancing and face coverings and adheres to the guidelines of the California Department of Public Health and the Orange County Health Care Agency.
All five IUSD board members voted to not only recommend face coverings for students and staff at school but to make wearing them a requirement, with certain exceptions, including kids with medical and mental exemptions, as well as during lunch or recess while students are at least 6 feet apart from each other.
Bokota added that students should only remove face coverings at the direction of a teacher or staff member.
“I am actually generally in favor of some degree of flexibility, but I am concerned that there’s an inherent vagueness and slippery-slope component to that, so I’d like to limit the slipperiness and the slope of the hill,” he said.
The ongoing discussion about what school will look like in the months ahead comes on the heels of a record-breaking day among the number of daily coronavirus cases reported in the state.
Wallin added that in a previous survey, 85% of the IUSD teachers felt safer with a mask requirement in place.
John Fogarty, the district’s assistant superintendent of business services, explained that “it is important for us to be aggressive with the PPE [personal protective equipment],” adding that they have over 98,000 disposable and cloth masks and over 18,000 face shields with plans to order 49,000 more cloth masks.
They’ve also ordered 11,000 study carrels, plastic barriers to separate students, and they have approximately 19,000 bottles of sanitizers and wipes.
Board member Betty Carroll explained that there was a possibility that Gov. Gavin Newsom would call for all schools in California to close, but so far there has been no action either way.
She pointed out that when schools shut down in March, it wasn’t because of a government mandate but because districts individually made the decision to shut down for safety reasons.
IUSD Supt. Terry Walker and others gave thorough presentations outlining the state and local agency guidelines, the task force and recommendation process, as well as the different models for all ages as well as plans for special education students and mental health resources.
The COVID-19 industry guidance plan for schools, released by the California Department of Public Health on June 5, includes disinfecting, training, monitoring for symptoms and an attestation checklist from the O.C. Health Care Agency.
The district will work with the administration at each school to design plans that work best for their campuses.
“I just want people to know that the details and the minutia are things that we look at,” Botoka said. “What type of hand sanitizer, how we train people, what we tell people, what symptoms you look for … As people are looking to make decisions for what they may be comfortable with, I want people to know all those small issues are things that the district is addressing.”
Walker anticipates that, with these customized distance and hybrid options, the number of students on campus will be reduced to about half.
“What this is requiring, in general, is an ongoing adaptive mentality,” he said. “We need to be consistently thinking about contingency plans ... We’re constantly looking at that and synthesizing that new information.”
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