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Schools across six Bay Area counties will remain closed at least until May 1, keeping more than 860,000 students home longer in a concerted effort to slow the escalating spread of novel coronavirus, county health and school officials declared Wednesday.
The announcement came after the same Bay Area jurisdictions — Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, Napa, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, plus the city of Berkeley — on March 16 imposed shelter-in-place orders that have wreaked havoc on local economies but are seen as crucial in stemming the pandemic.
Bay Area parents, many working from home or out of work due to the nationwide shutdown, prepared for another five weeks of home schooling or distance learning, and some wondered whether school would stay closed all the way to summer, as Gov. Gavin Newsom previously suggested might happen.
“I need to get myself mentally prepared. That could be a reality,” said Lisa Mazur, a Berkeley mother of an elementary and middle school student. “That is how I’m approaching it.”
Some school districts had hoped to reopen classrooms April 5 or the week after but were aware that the changing dynamics of the coronavirus outbreak in the Bay Area could push the date back significantly.
Santa Clara County’s largest high school sports league canceled its spring season Wednesday, becoming the first cancellation that could inevitably persuade others to make the same decision.
The 24-school Blossom Valley Athletic League, which stretches from Morgan Hill to San Jose, Campbell and part of Saratoga, has decided to pull the plug on baseball, softball, track and field and swimming, sports that have been on hiatus for nearly two weeks.
On Wednesday, public health officers and superintendents of schools from each county “recognized the need to extend the period of school closures and student dismissals” through the end of next month, officials said in a press release.
School facilities will remain open to essential staff, and flexible learning opportunities, meal deliveries and child care will continue to be arranged by school districts.
“Schools play a vital role in our communities, and balancing that role with the need for additional planning for social distancing at school sites is essential at a time when community transmission is widespread in Alameda County,” Alameda County Public Interim Health Officer Dr. Erica Pan said.
The announcement flies in the face of President Donald Trump’s contention Tuesday that the nation should be “opened and just raring to go by Easter” on April 12. That’s more than two weeks before Bay Area schools are now poised to reopen.
In the Bay Area, the school closure extension surprised few, as COVID-19 cases continue to rise and California remains one of the hardest hit regions in the nation.
“The impact is not fully known yet,” Santa Clara County Superintendent Mary Ann Dewan said. “And we didn’t believe that schools should open during that period of uncertainty.”
“In the Bay Area, we know the testing availability is just coming online, so we know they’re going to need more time to implement testing protocols,” she said in an interview Wednesday.
Dewan recommended that parents stay in close contact with their school districts and individual schools as more look to launch or expand their digital learning options.
“We recognize there are disruptions and changes, but all of our agencies are coming together to try to find some continuity so that students aren’t adversely affected by the physical closure of schools,” she said.
Though the closure extension applies to public school districts in the Bay Area, secular and religious private schools are also weighing staying shut through the end of April.
The Oakland and San Jose dioceses and the San Francisco Archdiocese — which among them have more than 170 schools in San Francisco, the Peninsula, the East Bay, South Bay and North Bay — had not extended their school closures as of Wednesday, though all indicated they might follow in the direction of public schools.
Since the closure began, teachers had spent the first two weeks delivering meals to students and working to develop adequate distance-learning programs.
San Jose Teachers Association President Patrick Bernhardt — who is also an AP Calculus teacher at Pioneer High School in San Jose — said his district and teachers are working to set up a distance-learning program that may have to work for longer than even the current month-long closure extension.
“We started the task of what distance learning looks like at the same moment that Newsom said school might be closed to the end of the school year,” Bernhardt said. “Up until then we were operating on county guidelines, so that sort of made everybody say, ‘Well, we need a long-term plan, this can’t be a two-week plan.’ This has to be a plan that can be extended as long as necessary.”
As the news reached school parents across the Bay Area on Wednesday, many saw the extension as the right move to keep coronavirus at bay, though concerns abound about lackluster attempts to provide distanc- learning materials to students so far.
John Jones III, whose 5-year-old son attends transitional kindergarten at Horace Mann Elementary in East Oakland, considers himself privileged because he can work from home. Jones enrolled his son, Josiah, into an online program with reading and writing activities to keep him “sharp and focused.”
“The school really hasn’t provided much, to be honest,” Jones said. “They sent him home with a packet and said you can go online … but a lot of parents don’t have access to the internet. I’m more concerned about the other kids. If our students are still struggling with a full day of school, what will be the impact of them being home with no school, especially with parents who can’t work from home. For most people, their computer consists of their cell phone.”
For some parents, the lack of thorough planning for distance learning by school districts was already an issue but is fast becoming much more relevant.
Though he admits that schools are facing “special circumstances,” Frank Eslami, parent of a student at Leland High School in San Jose, said he has not seen the kind of leadership he expected from officials at the San Jose Unified School District.
“In crisis, leaders have to rise to the occasion and not go and hide,” Eslami said. “School districts are hiding behind county officials and are taking no action whatsoever. It’s OK if the schools are closed as long as distance learning and education is not neglected. But that’s not what’s happened so far.”
Staff writer Angela Ruggiero contributed to this report.
