Parents and teachers have been looking to local school boards, ever since Governor Gavin Newsom announced his hopes to resume in-person learning for students. For Rosedale and Panama Buena Vista some tangible, but tentative dates are now on the calendar.
“Our job, we want to take care of our people,” said Jennifer Irvin, Assistant Superintendent of Education Services at Panama Buena Vista. Panama Buena Vista Union School District announced Tuesday night their tentative dates phase students back to in-person learning for kindergarten through sixth grade.
State preschools will potentially return Feb. 25, kindergarten march 4, first through third march 11, and fourth through six, March 18.
Reopening for non-cohorts, PBVUSD Superintendent Katie Russell said, is contingent on the governor’s requirement of a daily case rate of 25 cases per 100,000 when in the purple tier.
Meanwhile at Rosedale Union School District, the board said that if the downward trend of cases continues in Kern County, they’ll reopen 7th and 8th grades March 1st instead of their previously announced march 8th. They found that 20 percent of middle school parents want to keep their children at home.
The board is also considering a possible dedicated distance learning program for students who do not want to return in-person next fall, depending on the state of the pandemic.
“The drawbacks to that is parents would possibly need to transfer their students to that school,” an RUSD Board of Trustees member said.
Irvin added PBVUSD will begin surveillance testing Tuesday, three times a week, for teachers.
“For our employees,we wanted to do things the right way, and we feel for our employees this is a great way to do it, Irvin said.”
Plus they have vaccination clinics ready to roll the second it’s released widespread to educators. Sixteen hundred of their 2200 teachers responded via survey. Forty-seven percent stated they’d be interested in vaccinating. Neither the surveillance testing or vaccinations, Irvin explained, are required.
She added virtual learning will still be available to students when in-person returns. Both schools said that teachers will receive a ten-day notice before schools return.
“When their job is at the site, they are expected to return, if they don’t feel comfortable they would work with HR, and they have leave available to them,” Irvin said.
