A correction to an earlier version of this article has been appended to the end of the article.
Fremont Unified School District Superintendent CJ Cammack looks forward to welcoming the district’s 34,000 students back next month with an air of hope and a hint of unease.
The hope comes after wrapping up a summer session without COVID-19 spreading among students and staff at school and just one contracted service provider testing positive, even as the highly contagious delta variant of the virus began its aggressive march through the state. That, he said, signals that vaccines and layers of safety measures to keep the disease in check at schools — face masks and the like — work.
The unease? Even with so many people vaccinated, COVID-19 cases have multiplied at such an alarming rate that state health authorities on Wednesday called for everyone to resume wearing masks indoors as they beg more people to get immunized. If the virus remains rampant when Fremont Unified’s 34,000 students return to campuses Aug. 18, will the school’s pandemic safety measures that worked for some 1,700 summer schoolers when case rates were lower still do the trick?
“I think we have to be very cognizant of the fact that the delta variant is changing many of our circumstances,” Cammack said.
That’s the new reality as Bay Area schools such as Mary Casey Black Elementary in Brentwood began welcoming back students Wednesday in what was supposed to be a mostly-post-pandemic return to the classroom in California and across the country.
A big wild card is that although the vaccine is approved for those ages 12 and older, which includes middle and high school kids, most elementary school students aren’t eligible for the shots. The presumption was that vaccinating the adults and older kids would help ensure their safety.
To that end, the 30,000-student San Jose Unified School District just announced it will require regular COVID-19 testing for any staff or teachers who aren’t vaccinated, though more than 90% have had the shots.
Health experts haven’t deviated from their assessment that schools remain safe for kids, who generally don’t get very ill even if they contract COVID-19.
Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at University of California-San Francisco who has studied school safety, said schools were shown to be safe even before vaccines, and the lack of summer school outbreaks is a “hopeful” sign that will continue.
“The delta variant should not disturb our school openings, and we should definitely be opening for full, in-person learning,” Gandhi said.
But the science continues to shift around the virulence and transmissibility of variants like delta and the durability of antibodies from vaccines or previous COVID-19 infections. On Tuesday, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said recent studies show that vaccinated people who become infected can transmit the virus to others.
That has everyone’s attention.
Glenn Vander Zee, superintendent of San Jose’s East Side Union High School District, said they made it through summer school without any positive tests or cases of in-school transmission.
“School is where students really need to be in the fall,” Vander Zee said. “We are 22,000 students strong, and that’s a lot of households. We would anticipate that we won’t be immune to incidences. But we believe we can implement the safety measures in order to maintain the safety of our community as a whole.”
John Malloy, superintendent of the 30,000-student San Ramon Valley Unified School District, said there were only two isolated COVID-19 cases over the summer when 4,000 students took classes on five campuses.
But there are signs of COVID-19 anxiety in the district — 100 more students just signed up for its virtual academy in the fall, bringing the total to 500. And he expects to be buffeted by shifting guidance from state and local health authorities as the delta surge plays out. But he wants to maintain a sunny outlook for the kids who suffered through the isolation of school closures and remote learning over much of the last school year.
“There’s still so many positives that we’re preparing for, and I don’t want to lose that as we struggle with some of the other issues that exist,” Malloy said. “We learned one very difficult but important lesson last year, and that is that requirements changed regularly. I’m hoping the numbers will move down in terms of the virus, and that the variant lessens its hold.”
Few imagined such a concern back in June when schools took their summer break. Highly effective vaccines had become widely available to everyone 12 and older, and COVID-19 cases were plummeting even as immunization rates tapered off.
After a year of mostly online “distance learning” that studies showed were harmful to the academic development and emotional health of students, and local battles over reopening campuses, parents, teachers and school administrators looked forward to a fall with few reminders of the devastating pandemic.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who will face a Sept. 14 recall vote driven in part by parents angry over school closures, has insisted schools return to full in-person learning in the fall. Some of his administration’s guidance to ensure that, particularly a requirement for all students and staff to continue wearing masks in class, have been controversial and prompted a lawsuit this month by parent groups.
But the American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC have since echoed that guidance as cases continue to soar nationally. Now, parent advocates for keeping schools open fear the spike in cases will lead to closed classrooms again.
Jonathan Zachreson, of Roseville, founder of the parent group Reopen California Schools, one of two that sued the state over the mask requirement, said an Elk Grove Unified School District school board member in Sacramento County raised the possibility of schools being locked down due to the delta variant last Tuesday.
“There’s a lot of anxiety and a lot of PTSD in regards to what’s going on here,” Zachreson said, likening the trauma of campus closures on kids to that of soldiers returning from battle. He said the summer school experience is yet more solid proof kids are safe from the pandemic in schools.
But not all parents feel so reassured.
Nicole Jessie, 47, a cancer survivor in San Jose, was vaccinated in May, said she was “concerned” about the delta variant as she brought her 12-year-old daughter, Rukarrcya Levingston, to a clinic for her second vaccine dose on Tuesday. It will be another two weeks before Rukarrcya is fully protected. So when school starts Aug. 12, she isn’t sure whether to send Rukarrcya to school.
“If she doesn’t want to go,” she said, “she’ll just be distant learning at home on her computer.”
Staff Writer Rachel Oh contributed to this story.
Correction July 29, 2021: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story incorrectly gave the date that a 12-year-old girl received her vaccine. It was Tuesday, not Monday.
