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Almost a year after Sonoma County school campuses were closed in the face of the growing coronavirus pandemic, classroom doors in a small number of schools are expected to open on Monday.
This is when Sonoma Charter School is expected to open its doors to kindergartens and first and second graders. Liberty School in northern Petaluma plans to bring back students and staff on Wednesday.
They will likely be followed by four more schools and districts that have received approval from the Sonoma County Department of Health Services to bring students and staff back to campus on modified schedules and in entirely different routines.
“It’s like school opening day but on another planet,” said Marc Elin, principal of Sonoma Charter School, which has 215 students. “I am delighted. This is just good news. “
The Sonoma County Department of Health Services has COVID safety plans for 24 schools and districts in Sonoma County. Plans for six schools, including those of Sonoma Charter and Liberty School, were approved, paving the way for schools to reopen for modified in-person instruction.
These schools and districts join the 10 schools – nine of which are private – that were allowed to reopen from October, provided the state approved their safety protocols. This waiver program was halted in late November as virus cases statewide began to rise, but schools that had already been cleaned were allowed to continue.
In a community briefing on Wednesday, Dr Sundari Mase, the county’s public health official, described the safety plans for the six schools and districts that have been given permission to open as “stellar.”
“Very soon we will be announcing the reopening of other schools,” she said.
Also on Wednesday, Sonoma County’s largest school district, Santa Rosa City Schools, approved plans to bring back its roughly 5,000 elementary school students on April 1 and 2 and its nearly 11,000 high school students from the April 26 and 29.
Santa Rosa’s plan is based in part on the county’s planned move out of the purple level, the most restrictive step in the state’s color-coded coronavirus reopening plan, and into the red, indicating substantial transmission , but not widespread, of the virus.
Once in red, the rules for returning staff and students to campuses change, and schools and districts no longer need approval from the county health department to reopen. A change to red would also pave the way for the county’s middle and high school students to return to the classroom – which was not allowed in the purple level.
In the meantime, Santa Rosa’s COVID security plan remains in the county’s review process. Revisions were received by the county on February 23. A county response to these changes is due Thursday.
The Windsor Unified School District has a plan submitted and is also due to receive a county response to its reviews by Thursday. The county’s response to the changes submitted by the Wilmar Union School district, west of Petaluma, is expected on Tuesday and Two Rock Elementary, also west of Petaluma, is expected to receive information on its revisions by Wednesday.
If a school opens for at least a full year for in-person instruction, that school is allowed to remain open and continue with its reopening strategy even if Sonoma County falls back into the purple level.
“Once that happens and the schools open, even if we go back to the purple level, the schools stay open,” Mase said.
Like many back-to-school projects being considered by the county, Sonoma Charter School will open on Monday with in-person instruction only for kindergarten, first and second graders. After spring break on March 29, older students will begin to return to a part-time and in-person distance learning format, Elin said.
But on Monday, the campus doors will open for a class of kindergarten students who have never seen the inside of their classroom, as well as first and second graders for whom life on campus doesn. maybe just a vague memory.
Since each of the three returning classes has only one class of students, school officials were able to divide them into two stable groups that will attend a full day of school four days a week, a Elin said.
“These kids have been exposed to so much screen time,” Elin said. “What we love about having them back on campus is that they’re in a more traditional model, a more physical model. They no longer look at screens, they look at an adult. “
You can contact Editor-in-Chief Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or [email protected]. On Twitter @benefield.
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