The Poway Unified School District was denied by the California State Health Department to reopen middle and high school for in-person learning, officials said late Sunday night
Davison is a co-founder of the Parent Association of North County San Diego, an organization that includes school districts in Carlsbad, San Marcos, Oceanside, and Vista, as well as the San Dieguito Union High School District.
“What we ve noticed when we started talking to the parents in other districts is that we were all encountering the same problems,” Davison said.
Davison said that there has been pushback from teacher’s unions, concerns about a lack of substitute teachers, the purple tier and safety protocols being in place, all of which, he said, has been or can be addressed.
“In fact . one of our projects, as part of our association, is to hire substitutes and get parents to volunteer to be substitute teachers,” Davison said.
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Parents of students in five local school districts have joined forces to form the Parent Association of North County San Diego, to advocate for students’ needs amid the pandemic and beyond.
They organized in response to protracted school closures that began in March, with parents asking themselves how they could expedite the move from distance learning back to campus, said Ginny Merrifield, one of the organization’s founders.
“How can we influence decision-making so that kids can choose to go back to school now,” she said. “Out of that conversation, we needed to realize that we need to share our resources and our stories, and put a lens on the decisions to put students first.”
Biden and Democrats rush to reopen schools in new year as COVID-19 death toll climbs
Dozens of large urban school districts in the United States from San Diego, Tacoma and Denver to Chicago, Atlanta and Washington DC plan to restart in-person schooling in the opening weeks of the new year, even as health experts predict January will see a “surge on top of a surge” of the coronavirus pandemic, which has already claimed more than 340,000 US lives.
December has been the deadliest month since the pandemic began, with nearly 70,000 deaths over the past 30 days and a record 3,725 deaths on December 29, according to Johns Hopkins University. “The next couple of months are going to be awful,” Dr. Jonathan Reiner, professor of medicine at George Washington University, told CNN. “We re going to lose 3,000, maybe more people a day, probably until we’re well into February.”