Many SLO County students start 2021 in distance learning. When will schools reopen?
The new year didn’t bring much change for school districts in San Luis Obispo County, where many classrooms remain shuttered to in-person instruction.
“It’s been hard for everyone,” said Emily Cappellano, a third grade teacher at Baywood Elementary School in Los Osos and the president of the San Luis Coastal Teachers Association.
“And it was just hard to come back to a screen after break. I want to see the kids,” she added.
In fall 2020, local school boards held meetings to plan for the eventual return to in-person classes. Some, such as Paso Robles Joint Unified School District and Atascadero Unified School District, made plans to bring secondary school students back into classrooms after their winter breaks.
Others, including San Luis Coastal and Lucia Mar Unified school districts, voted to wait until San Luis Obispo County was out of the state’s purple tier of COVID-19 restrictions and into the red tier for at least two weeks. Under California’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy, counties in the red tier have coronavirus transmission that is considered substantial, as opposed to widespread.
Now all local school districts are in the same boat. They must wait to bring more students back to campus until the state and county deem it is safe enough.
San Luis Obispo County has been under the state’s regional stay-at-home order since Dec. 6. That order bars schools from bringing back a full grade level of students back into classrooms unless they had already brought back at least one grade level before the shut down order.
The only exception to that rule affects schools or districts that applied for and were granted waivers to hold in-person elementary school classes. Students at those elementary schools still can return to in-person instruction in 2021 if they were not doing so previously.
All schools that had already opened to in-person instruction are allowed to remain open.
Gov. Gavin Newsom released new guidance on Dec. 30 for schools in the state.
In that guidance, Newsom said elementary schools in counties with a seven-day average of fewer than 28 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents would be eligible to reopen kindergarten through second grades as soon as mid-February, and the rest sometime in March, if they have not already opened to those grades.
San Luis Obispo County currently has an adjusted case rate of 43.8 per 100,000 residents, according to the California Department of Public Health.
On Tuesday, San Luis Obispo County added 611 cases of coronavirus, bringing the total number of people who have locally tested positive for COVID-19 to 11,895.
Meanwhile, cases of COVID-19 in schools across San Luis Obispo County have remained relatively low.
According to data gathered by The Tribune, 104 school employees and 77 students — across 10 public school districts, three charter schools and several private schools — have tested positive for the virus since the start of the 2020-2021 school year as of Jan. 4. That’s up from 86 employees and 59 students who were reported to The Tribune as testing positive as of Dec. 14, 2020.
All local schools that have reopened allow parents to choose whether to send their kids to in-person school or remain in distance learning.
Here’s where local school districts stand in terms of reopening:
Lucia Mar Unified School District
Lucia Mar has not reopened any full grade levels in any of its schools. That means the district is essentially stuck as it is, and it cannot begin reopening unless it applies for an elementary school waiver.
However, the South County district has brought dozens of students back to campuses in small cohorts for much-needed in-person instruction. These include students with disabilities and students who are English language learners, as well as those with poor internet connections or those who are struggling academically.
The Lucia Mar school board unanimously voted in November 2020 to scratch its plans to reopen elementary schools on Nov. 30 and secondary schools on Jan. 11, 2021. Instead, the district decided to wait to bring those students back to campus until the county is in the red tier for at least two weeks.
San Luis Coastal Unified School District
San Luis Coastal reopened preschool through transitional kindergarten across all its school sites on Nov. 3, 2020. Some schools in the district later reopened to kindergarten and first grade as a way to “pilot systems, processes, and procedures for future implementation at all school sites,” Kim McGrath, the district’s assistant superintendent of educational services, wrote in an email to The Tribune.
The district cannot continue to reopen grade levels at schools because it did not apply for an elementary school in-person waiver from the county.
Like Lucia Mar, San Luis Coastal has brought back many students for in-person services where necessary.
The district’s school board voted in November 2020 to delay its full reopening, which was originally scheduled for Monday, to whenever the county is in the red tier for 21 consecutive days.
Paso Robles Joint Unified School District
Paso Robles Joint Unified reopened school campuses to transitional kindergarten and kindergarten on Nov. 4, 2020, bringing back first through second grades on Nov. 17, and third through fifth grades on Nov. 30.
The North County district’s board voted on Dec. 15 to extend its winter break to Jan. 11, 2021, as COVID-19 cases in San Luis Obispo County continue to rise, in hopes that it would be able to bring back all middle and high school students after the holidays.
However, on Monday, the board met again and voted 5-1 — with trustee Jim Reed dissenting and trustee Chris Bausch not present at the meeting — to not reopen those secondary schools until the county and state tell the district it is safe to do so.
The vote came after the Paso Robles district Superintendent Curt Dubost gave a passionate speech detailing the disappointment and frustration he felt for not being able to bring back the secondary students sooner.
“So many of the regulations that we have been given are just really hard to explain when you face a parent whose kid is struggling, saying my kid’s seeing a therapist for depression, I need to get my kids back to school,” Dubost said at Monday’s board meeting.
Like other districts in the county, the Paso Robles district has brought back many students for in-person instruction in small-group cohorts, and it hopes to continue to expand that capacity in the upcoming weeks.
Atascadero Unified School District
Atascadero Unified has also brought back all of its elementary school students, with transitional kindergarten through second grades returning Nov. 3, 2020, and third through fifth grades returning Nov. 16.
The district, like the Paso Robles district, initially wanted to bring secondary school students back to in-person instruction after winter break. But rising COVID-19 cases have forced the district to delay those plans until further notice.
“We’re poised and ready to bring back those students as soon as we’re allowed,” district Superintendent Tom Butler told The Tribune on Tuesday. “Our objective is to provide a world-class education, and (delaying the reopening) makes it more challenging.”
The North County district is continuing to provide in-person instruction in small groups for students who need extra help and assistance.
Templeton Unified School District
Templeton Unified, another North County school district, brought students in transitional kindergarten through fifth grade back to in-person instruction on Nov. 30.
Like the other districts, Templeton Unified cannot bring back secondary school students to classrooms until the county and state public health departments deem it is safe to do so. However, it is providing various in-person, small group support services to special education and struggling students.
San Miguel Joint Union School District
This small school district located north of Paso Robles has reopened in various levels across its two schools.
Cappy Culver Elementary School reopened to transitional kindergarten students through third grade on Nov. 16, and fourth through eighth grades on Nov. 30.
Lillian Larsen Elementary School reopened to transitional kindergarten and kindergarten on Nov. 16, first through third grade on Nov. 30, and fourth and fifth grades on Dec. 7. The school reopened to sixth through eighth grades on Monday because it had previously opened other grades at the same campus.
Pleasant Valley and Shandon school districts
Pleasant Valley Joint Union Elementary School District, a small, rural district with one school northeast of Paso Robles, opened in its entirety on Oct. 19.
In Shandon Joint Unified School District, only Parkfield Elementary School, which serves less than 10 students, has fully reopened.
However, all other schools in the small, rural North County district remain closed to in-person instruction aside from various small groups for students who need extra help.
Coast Unified and Cayucos Elementary school districts
Neither of these North Coast school districts has reopened any full grade levels to in-person instruction. Both, however, are providing some in-person support for students who need it.
