Newsom, Lawmakers Reach Deal Incentivizing Schools To Reopen By April Listen Update RequiredTo play audio, update browser or Flash plugin.
A parent places a face shied on a student outside of Newhall Elementary School Thursday, Feb. 25, 2021, in Santa Clarita, Calif. Elementary school students returned to school this week in the Newhall School District.
AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez
Updated Friday, 5:22 p.m.
After months of negotiating, Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders struck a deal Monday to encourage schools to bring California’s youngest students back to classrooms by April.
The plan offers $2 billion in incentives to districts that reopen classrooms for students in transitional kindergarten through second grade by March 31. Vulnerable students in all grades including homeless, disabled and foster youth, English language learners, those without internet access, and disengaged students must a
A $6.6 billion reopening plan announced Monday for California schools comes with significant strings attached, requirements that could mean many Bay Area districts might see millions of dollars cut out of their cash windfall. The deal between Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature would provide $4.6 billion to help schools navigate reopening and learning loss amid an ongoing pandemic, with money paying for staffing, ventilation, supplies, summer.
Associated Press
The majority of California’s 6.1 million public school students could be back in the classroom by April under new legislation announced Monday by Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders. Critics panned the plan as inadequate.
Most students in the nation’s most populous state have been learning from home for the past year during the pandemic. But with new coronavirus cases falling rapidly throughout the state, Newsom and lawmakers have been under increasing pressure to come up with a statewide plan aimed at returning students to schools in-person.
If approved by the Legislature, the plan announced Monday would not order districts to return students to the classroom and no parents would be compelled to send their kids back to school in-person. Instead, the state would set aside $2 billion to pay districts that get select groups of students into classrooms by the end of the month.
Boy in classroom. Image credit Ernesto Eslava, Pixabay
The data is in: school reopenings do not significantly increase the spread of COVID-19. Yet some teachers’ unions continue to fight to keep schools closed, even as kids suffer from losing an entire year in the classroom. In fact, the teachers’ union in the second-largest school district in America actually played the race card or, more accurately, the Marxist critical race theory card to condemn a toothless reopening plan as in league with “structural racism.”
On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) and other Democratic lawmakers revealed their compromise school-reopening proposal. Newsom and other Democrats spent months working to strike a deal, and the reopening plan does not force schools in more dangerous COVID-19 zones to reopen, it merely incentivizes reopening using state grants.