Public vs. Private: How Schools in the East Bay are Working to Reopen

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com/halfpoint

By Anna Ravid

In March of 2020, schools closed down as COVID-19 spread across the nation. Teachers and students were thrust into digital learning, adapting on the spot to Zoom, Google Classroom, Canvas and a myriad of other new online programs. While Californians did not underestimate the deadly ramifications of COVID-19, being the first state to issue a stay at home order, it was almost unthinkable last March that a year later life would not be back to normal.

 While a few public schools in the Bay Area have begun to open gradually, 5 million students statewide have not seen the inside of a classroom for a year.  School Districts across the state have struggled to bring students back to schools, including two of the largest in the state, San Francisco Unified and Los Angeles Unified, which are slated to reopen at reduced capacity for the first time since the onset of the pandemic this April. While large districts have struggled, Private schools have flourished, many reopening in the fall with extensive safety plans designed to mitigate the risk of COVID-19. 

One district where students have not yet returned to in-person learning is Mount Diablo Unified School District, which serves 56 schools and over 30,000 students from Concord and Walnut Creek to Pittsburg and Martinez. After a year of complex negotiations, the district detailed its latest back to school plan in a February 19 newsletter entitled ‘Three Steps Forward.’

 “MDEA (Mount Diablo Educators Association) and the District also added five additional bargaining days for the next upcoming weeks, with a commitment from both teams to complete an agreement for a Hybrid plan by March 15th that allows for students and teachers to safely return to school.”

 A successful implementation of the proposed hybrid plan is dependent upon Contra Costa County moving out of the purple tier. One key component of the reopening negotiation is the teachers unions’ demands. The statewide California Teachers Association and the California state government have been in debate over the conditions under which in person learning can take place.

 “Once completed vaccines for employees are a key element to safe in-person school reopening,” wrote the California Teachers’ Association in a January letter of demands to Gavin Newsom.

 Facing pressure from the Biden administration to bring students back to the classroom, Newsom has supported the multi-billion dollar California Legislature bill which aims to provide a  financial incentive for California to reopen in person learning. 

According to the text of California Senate Bill 86, to acquire state funding the bill  “requires a local educational agency to offer in-person instruction and authorizes these agencies to offer distance learning, as specified.”  

While the bill provides copious incentives to open, how many students and hours to reopen is left unclear. The bill also does not fully address the logistical challenges many districts face in creating their COVID-19 safety plans, addressing the need for student and teacher safety, cost restrictions, and union negotiations. 

MDUSD has reached an agreement to return students to the classroom a year after COVID closures.    

“We are pleased to report that by Monday (March 29), we will have successfully welcomed over 11,000 students back to our classrooms,” wrote Adam Clark, Mt. Diablo superintendent. “A It is also good news that the number of cases of COVID-19 is steadily declining in all of the communities served by our district.”

However, students will not exclusively receive in-person instruction. The current plan includes a hybrid of in person and virtual learning. Students receive virtual instruction in the mornings and go to school twice a week for 2-3 hours in the afternoon. Plans for the future remain uncertain.

“We will also offer families the option to continue in a Distance Learning model in 2021-2022 if they prefer,” said Clark. 

Parents at recent board meetings have expressed dissatisfaction with the slow pace of reopening and the very limited amount of in person hours while the teachers’ union have complained about the lack of follow through on safety protocols designed to make the return to school safer. Conflicting interests of the teachers’ union, parents, students, and government regulation have made it difficult to make any progress towards returning to pre-pandemic schooling. 

Private schools, free from many of the constraints of public schools, have often been able to reopen efficiently in the fall. Their COVID-19 safety plans can shed light on the key components necessary to bring students back to campus. The Athenian School has managed to bring students back to campus this fall as part of a hybrid plan where underclassmen and upperclassmen rotate between online and in-person instruction every other week. 

Athenian had the assistance of a medical doctor and industrial hygiene firm FACS (Forensic Analytical Consulting Services) when creating their one hundred page COVID-19 safety plan. Upon the state approval of their school reopening waiver, Athenian had the infrastructure in place to quickly begin bringing students back to campus, beginning with the sixth grade. 

Reaction to Athenian’s reopening has generally been positive. Overall, two thirds of the upper school and ninety five percent of the middle school have come back to campus. Open communication and has been a key component of the reopening. 

“Teachers' reactions were mixed,” said a team of faculty in charge of COVID-19 coordination including Amy Wintermeyer, Eric Niles, Lauren Railey, and Debbie Derana. “Many were very excited to return to in-person instruction and others felt nervous and preferred staying in distance learning. Faculty were involved in that they all attended mandatory training conducted by an industrial hygiene consultant. Also, our school administrators, our medical advisor, and safety consultants held open meetings with faculty to address questions and concerns.”

In weekly testing procedures this year, Athenian has had a total of three positive cases, two of which are believed to be false positives. According to the administration, after a positive case, Athenian files a report to the California Department of Public Health, which opens a report and conducts its own stringent contact tracing procedures to determine any individuals who may have come into contact with the infectious person. 

As a private school, Athenian had the ability to adapt its plan and safety precautions quickly and efficiently as circumstances in Contra Costa County change without lengthy negotiations. 

“Once it was deemed safe to open, we did so as quickly as possible,” said Wintermeyer, Niles, Railey and Derana. “(We)  think it helped that we had worked with FACS and already had a safety plan in place. The advantages of being a private school are that we are not held to the requirements of the district and we can make our own decisions around schedule and capacity.”  

While many school districts have also put together extensive safety plans, they have been unable to execute them as the COVID-19 case count fluctuates and the requirements of the governments and unions shift. The outstanding comparative success of private schools raises questions about the equity in quality of education across different socioeconomic levels in the past year. 

According to a study on COVID-19 school performance by the Economic Policy Institute, “learning and development have been interrupted and disrupted for millions of students… The pandemic has exacerbated well-documented opportunity gaps that put low-income students at a disadvantage relative to their better-off-peers.” Some reasons cited for this widening gap are uneven access to devices and internet  and the difficulties of online instruction including vastly reduced hours, distractions of home life and a lack of resources for teachers conducting online line lessons. 

According to a Bay Area News Group study, a large percentage of the public schools that have reopened are in wealthy areas. 

“Those serving children in big cities, or children who come from poor families or families of average means, remain in online “distance learning,” widely acknowledged as inferior to in-person instruction,” writes John Woolfock in a Mercury News article entitled “Rich Bay Area kids head back to class, others don’t”

This statistic compounds the growing COVID-19 opportunity gap for students. Private schools, most of which have reopened, also cater to the wealthy. 

The pandemic has shed a light on the different circumstances for public and private schools. What remains clear is students need a return to normalcy. How long before students across the state are back in school full-time remains uncertain.