The Mount Diablo Unified School District Governing Board on Wednesday will discuss the status of plans to reopen schools in the district that have remained closed since last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Superintendent Dr. Adam Clark last week wrote in a letter to district families and staff that he will provide at Wednesday’s board meeting a “formal update regarding our COVID-19 safety protocols, state and county requirements for reopening, and the status of negotiations.”
In January, Clark told the school board that distance learning would continue in the district at least into March after reopening plans approved by the board late last year were postponed due to the state’s regional stay-at-home order.
Clark noted in his letter last week that “eight of the 18 school districts within Contra Costa County have signed agreements with their labor partners and are preparing to bring students on campus in the coming weeks.”
The open session portion of Wednesday’s meeting is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. The meetings are taking place virtually due to the pandemic. More information on how to follow the meeting or to submit public comment can be found online at https://www.mdusd.org/boardmeetings.
keep your wallets locked up
their coming for your money to re open lol
best dem act
use the kids to get your money
$50 says they decide not to go back in person
Does it say who the 8 out of 18 schools are?
All they do is discuss and meet, discuss and meet. And nothing ever comes of it. Sounds like a bunch of politicians.
That’s because they are politicians.
Just less accountable to voters…
Same old baloney.
Talk and accomplish nothing.
Tax and accomplish nothing.
Promises never kept.
It’s all about who will allow the appropriate amount of silver to cross the appropriate palms.
Big day for Dr. Clark, do you represent the students and parents of the district or are you just another union puppet?
The Hybrid option is 2 days a week for 2hrs a day in the afternoon. Yes, just 4 hours of instruction for even High School students per WEEK. That is the making of a academic success story combined with the limited learning this past year.
So they are offering something that is essentially worse than distance learning to be able to say they offered something but at the same time deter families from signing on for it because it simply is not enough instruction.
So … I want Adam to open the schools without having to vaccinate the teachers. As a parent, I think I have some rights and say in this. The kids need to be in a physical classroom.
But, … I doubt that Adam will open the schools. Adam and the whiners (teachers) union will cry and say that they need vaccines prior to teaching. Course these are the same teachers who have said that they want to reduce the number of minutes they are required to teach a day online. The online teaching is just too demanding for them.
It has been 11 months since they quit teaching in person .. 11 months of doing less work and getting the same pay. 11 months of being able to relax while parents help them to do their jobs because distance learning is a joke and is not working.
The usual response to this (perfectly reasonable) comment is that teachers are working extra hard to do online instruction. That’s probably true in some cases – because online teaching is a hassle and doesn’t really work, so a conscientious teacher will find it time-consuming to try to make it work as well as possible. But it’s also irrelevant: the schools are failing in their basic responsibility to the citizens they (supposedly) serve, and are failing to deliver the constitutional right in this state to a decent education at the state’s expense.
The other thing, of course, is that schools are not particularly high risk for Covid transmission. This is sort of surprising in the abstract, and it was understandable not to believe this in March 2020. It’s total denial of reality now: the evidence is overwhelming. Low risk with basic measures of masking and ventilation. Extremely high damage to kids and to society when schools are closed. The tradeoff should be obvious: slight increase in transmission vs. huge human costs from closing. Guess who doesn’t want to make that call, though? Teachers’ unions and the politicians who answer to them.
Where did you learn that schools are low risk of transmission? I recall a story that was the opposite. Let’s keep the children safe.
You sound so uneducated. These teachers have worked longer hours than ever for the same JOKE OF A PAYCHECK as always ….you need the teachers so badly but you talk so horribly about them.
@ Teacher
You may be the exception, but I can tell you many of the teachers that my children have … they are NOT putting the effort in. One teacher in High School has yet to give ANY homework for my kid. No homework for a high school kid in 5 months of school … Yeah, right.
As for the joke of a paycheck, let me explain this to you, YOU, not anyone else, but YOU chose your career. So get over yourself. Don’t like it, find a new job.
As for needing the teachers, yeah, we do. We also need the auto mechanics, factory workers, doctors, police and almost every other profession out there. But today, we need teachers to do THE JOB that they are being paid to do with the (your words here) ‘Joke of a pay a check’.
@Teacher, as opposed to the amazing educational level attained by public school teachers… wow, breathtaking. People majoring in education are, on average, some of the least impressive (by test scores) college students and grads. Judging by your comment, it seems you think teachers should get a pay raise right now because they are all working longer hours? (They probably aren’t, but I’m sure some of the conscientious ones are.) How disconnected from reality does your education allow you to be? Public schools are hemorrhaging students because they aren’t actually holding school, kids are falling way behind, parents have to basically duplicate the teacher’s role if they want the kid to learn anything, significant numbers have just dropped off the educational map entirely … and you think teachers are getting a raw deal here. Well.
These things can be true at the same time:
1. Teachers generally work hard.
2. Online teaching is not easy; it’s a big hassle and very time-consuming.
3. Teacher’s salary level is not high. [we won’t mention benefits…]
4. School districts and teachers’ unions are throwing kids and families under the bus right now and they show little intention of doing anything else.
All those things are true. The fact that 1-3 are true says nothing at all about whether 4 is true. Spoiler alert: it is.
But your sneering at people for “needing teachers so badly right now” – where does that come from? There are plenty of teachers showing up for work and teaching in person right now, today. They just happen to be teaching in private schools, or in states and school districts with less of a teachers’ union stranglehold. The only sense in which people “need” the public teachers to show up is that the public schools have a monopoly on the government-provided education that Californians are constitutionally entitled to. So heck yes, people are within their rights to expect their school districts to deliver on their constitutional responsibilities. You are effectively mocking people for wanting the education that more wealthy people are getting for their kids right now. An education the public schools could be providing right now, and should be providing. Way to sneer at the public you are supposed to be serving – really shows the right spirit.
@Doh, spend a little time Googling in the following directions. Look up Prof. Emily Oster, a health economist who has put together data on school reopenings. Look at studies from Spain, the UK, the EU and the US on Covid transmission within schools. Look up Dr. Alasdair Munro and his evidence reviews of all Covid research related to kids.
Or read this piece by three CDC scientists: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2775875
Or heck, just listen to the director of the CDC from six days ago:
“There is increasing data to suggest that schools can safely reopen and that safe reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be vaccinated in order to reopen safely,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told reporters at a briefing. “Vaccination of teachers is not a prerequisite for the safe reopening of schools.”
Of course, the White House then said, laughably, that she was speaking “as a private citizen” when she said that. The pressure of teachers’ unions goes all the way to the top of our politics.
“Oh, they’re finally going to put the students first!”
Ha ha ha ha ha ha just kidding, of course they’re not. The union holds all the cards and this is going to be process theater once more: “we’re moving towards a safe reopening *in the coming weeks*, yes yes, don’t ask for specifics, don’t ask any teacher to take any risk over .00000, but we are moving forward with all our stakeholders to at some point in the future have a good process for deciding when at some point in the future we can SAFELY reopen.”
Alternate headline: ‘Captain of Titanic to hold press conference to discuss status of gaping hole in the hull: nearly half of the ship is intact and will be seaworthy in “the coming weeks”‘
Is that 2-10-2021, or 2-10-2022?
again can any dem supporter tell us how voting for democrats has helped you and your family
please we need your help to understand
We need to do what our Governor tells us to do. Remember Newsom said we need to listen to science. Former President Trump wanted to reopen schools last Fall, but Newsom said that would be reckless. We should be wearing 3 masks and in two weeks this will flatten the curve. Shelter in place.
@Chris~Are you Dr. Chris Farnitano, Contra Costa County Health Director? I appreciate your sarcasm…
He’s the Andy Kaufman of Governors.
It’s not like they have had over a year to “discuss” the issue, make plans that are updated as needed, do whatever else.
Right???
It’s amazing that any of these people have the chutzpah to get in front of the public and talk about ‘plans’ at this date. The time for plans was early Spring 2020. We are a year into a masterpiece of stalling and stonewalling. That’s the real plan that’s being enacted, and it has been the real plan since the beginning, by all appearances.
How long did it take school districts to make politicians protect their enrollment-based funding for the 2020-21 year? Passed by the state legislature in June 2020. They are a masterpiece of quick action when it comes to their real priorities, which obviously involve protecting the institutional incumbents, not kids’ education.
It’s never been about the students, before, during or after the big bad virus. Their only interest is how they get their money and union dues going to the democrat party.
Talk Talk Talk Talk. I am sick of Talk. Private schools have been MAKING IT HAPPEN ALL YEAR. Public schools in other states have been MAKING IT HAPPEN ALL YEAR. Come on, MDUSD!!!
@Parent – I wholeheartedly agree with you about teachers complaining about their salaries. People know what the salary is when they take a job so I have no sympathy for them when they whine about it. They being teachers or anyone else.