This report was updated at 11 a.m. Dec. 24, 2020 to include additional districts that will stay in distance learning mode until the end of the school year.
With the coronavirus out of control in California, and the health system reaching a breaking point, momentum toward opening more public schools for in-person instruction has largely come to a halt.
Some districts already offering in-person instruction are returning to distance learning, if only temporarily, as school leaders try to get through the holiday season and weather the full force of the pandemic’s spread.
That’s according to an EdSource survey of the state’s 58 county offices of education conducted between Dec. 7 and Dec. 16. At the time, almost all counties in the state had moved onto the Tier One “purple” list, effectively prohibiting schools not already offering in-person instruction from doing so.
Here in Oakland Unified, we are on our winter break, usually a time when our students, staff and families are joyfully free of school and preparing to come together to celebrate the holidays or just enjoy some much needed time off.
As we all know, this year is different with the pandemic hanging over our heads.
I call on Governor Gavin Newsom and the health officials advising him to move educators closer to the front of the line to get the COVID vaccine sooner rather than later, because educators and school staff here and across the state do critical work every day.
Updated Dec. 28 after President Trump signed the legislation he had threatened to veto.
The Covid-19 relief package Congress approved before Christmas will provide at least $6.8 billion to California’s school districts and charter schools. That equals about an eighth of the $54.9 billion that Congress will award to K-12 schools.
President Trump signed the bill Dec. 27 after threatening to veto it. He had objected that checks for individuals, a cornerstone of the $900 billion in aid, should be triple what’s in the bill. He backed down amid warnings a veto would create hardship for Americans desperate for immediate assistance.
See funding by district
Black students in California have much higher rates of unexcused absences from school than their white peers, which sometimes lead to disciplinary consequences that can further disrupt their education, according to newly released data.
The data, released in November, represents the first time the California Department of Education has broken down absenteeism rates by the reasons for students missing school whether students were excused, say, for an illness or doctor’s appointment, or unexcused, defined as missing school without a “valid” reason. Lack of transportation to school, among the most common reasons students miss school, is typically an unexcused absence.