Mira Loma Is Reopening: What we know so far

Update 2:

San Juan Unified has released a video of its board meeting detailing the plans for reopening campus. Highlights include the following:

1. Currently, school district officials are considering splitting student populations (who are not moderate to severe special needs students) into 3 cohorts. One cohort will be learning entirely at home, while the other 2 will work with a hybrid model. Special needs students who have moderate to severe disabilities will likely use a 2 cohort model where all return to school.
2. The district will aim to stock all schools with significant supplies of safety, meeting per-school quotas such as 1,000 student masks, 50 N95 masks, 2 thermometers, a glass guard. It will also aim to distribute 2 cloth masks to every student and 5 to every teacher.
3. The results were met with backlash from many families who claimed that board members had been indecisive and pushed reopening to January instead of creating a schedule as quickly as other districts had. Some, however, praised the district in its handling of the situation, saying that lives were at risk considering the danger of Covid, and that making a rash decision would have been worse. They cited failing hybrid classrooms of other school districts.

Update 1:

A San Juan Unified School District board meeting concluded that campuses will be reopening for students on January 5, 2021. Students with moderate to severe special needs will be able to return earlier.

Importantly, the return to school will likely not be like it was before the outbreak. Instead, the return may be “hybrid,” meaning that only a partial-group of students will be at school at the same time. SJUSD has also repeatedly stated that it wants to remain committed to providing a distance learning option for families that still want it, helping to combat socioeconomic and infection rate disparities.

Original Article

On Tuesday September 29, Sacramento County entered the red tier status in the model for coronavirus spread, meaning that the county is still at a substantial risk against COVID-19, but some things will change. Being in the red zone requires a 5-8% positivity rate in the county and that there are 4-7 new daily cases per 100,000 people (covid19.ca.gov). There are four tiers in total: yellow, orange, red, and purple, with yellow signifying minimal disease occurrence and purple signifying a widespread disease occurrence. Counties in the purple tier have to close nearly all businesses and non-essential organizations. Now that we’ve entered the red zone, things are a bit different.

There are some changes that come with being a red zone county. With fewer restrictions, some of the businesses that can now open (with all necessary changes and precautions) include hair salons, malls, zoos and aquariums, movie theaters, hotels, gyms, restaurants, and (the one we care about most) schools. However, just because they can, they might not reopen immediately. 

If counties want to move to the next lower tier, they have to stay in their current tier for at least 3 weeks. (Sacramento County’s goal is “orange for Halloween” – or in other words, our goal is to reach the orange tier, or moderate risk level, by October 31st.) After staying in a tier for 3 weeks, they also have to meet the next tier’s requirements for at least 2 weeks. Data is constantly being collected throughout the week and county tier changes are updated every Tuesday. This means that the soonest we can return back to school is in about a month if the case count continues to descend, and that’s if our school chooses to reopen. A meeting has been scheduled for Oct 13th for the San Juan Unified Board of Education on “the current status of plans to return to modified in-person learning,” the school district explains on its website. It also says families will be surveyed on their opinions regarding this. 

Our county’s Health Officer issued an order on August 8th that is still in effect. The order states that small groups of students may be allowed to return back to school, but these students would preferably be only those who really need to, such as homeless students, students with learning disabilities, etc. The total number of people on campus should never exceed 25% of the regular capacity. Some answers to FAQs were also published. They covered many different questions, but one of the more important ones regarding high school was that GED and HiSET tests are allowed to be taken, so long as the students take them alone, and that in-person tutoring on campus is not allowed. 

It is unlikely based on all available information that COVID-19 will be going away anytime in the near future. However, it is possible for us to go on with our lives so long as we do it safely.