At a recent school board meeting, MUSD announced that on April 1st, 2021, elementary school students and high school freshmen would be able to return to classrooms, if they chose to. In addition, students that are failing in school and have two or more Fs would be invited to return back to in-person schooling, following a hybrid model, as discussed in that meeting. Students would be assigned into two groups and will alternate between going to school one day and distance learning the next, according to MHS Principal Francis Rojas.
For the two weeks before spring break, which is mid-April, students will only be attending fifth and sixth periods in person after lunch in order to ease students in, Rojas said in a Zoom interview. After spring break, students will go to school for periods one through four, return home for lunch, and go back to school for periods five and six, Rojas said. In May, all periods will be in-person every day, he added.
“We know there are populations of students who really struggled through distance learning. I’m not sure about MUSD, but in other districts there is this talk of loss of learning. How do we support students that are struggling or falling behind, so on and so forth,” Rojas said. “The state had put requirements that at least one grade level has to come back in person by April 1st, one grade level at the elementary level, and one at the secondary level. [For the secondary level], it was decided it would be freshmen, as when you look at the group of students who are struggling, most of them are freshmen.”
Last month, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a new $6.6 billion bill approving state spending to return students to classrooms and give schools that return to in-person learning more funding to do so as long as the school reopens by the end of March, according to the California government. While helpful, this bill has not influenced the decision to reopen MUSD schools, Superintendent Cheryl Jordan said in a Zoom interview.
“Because we’ve already been planning, and we have our tiered system of targeting students, we are prepared to have our plan in place which happens to coincide with the timeline that the governor specified, we can take advantage of that funding as well,” Jordan said.
The $6.6 billion is split into two different pots of money, $2 billion set aside for PPE so that the return to in-person learning can be safe for staff and students, and $4.6 billion set aside for extended learning, Jordan said. This extended learning category is something that MUSD is looking to tap into to improve long term infrastructure, mainly improvements to summer school, which is usually for students who failed a class or want to accelerate through dual enrollment, she said. However, Jordan wants to have an extended learning program for students in between those two groups, she added.
Regarding teacher vaccinations, “We won’t require vaccinations, and the main reason for that is because vaccinations are a person’s right to privacy, so unless the government mandates a vaccination, we cannot, so that will not be tied to our expansion of in-person learning,” Jordan said. “The county public health department has set up specific vaccinations for school educators, and [in the week of March 15th] they set out close to a little over 200 vaccines for just MUSD employees.”
The Milpitas Teachers Association (MTA) and the district have worked to ensure that the return would be safe and worked for everyone, according to MTA representative Brett Webber.
“[Educators’] priority is the education of our students,” Webber said in a Zoom interview. “Having said that, what is the stance on returning to in-person schooling? Safety. That’s our next priority. And that’s everybody’s safety. We are looking at what the conditions with COVID are, and the conditions for us to be able to return to in-person schooling. It needs to be safe. Those are our primary priorities.”
Webber said he believed that the MTA and district are working very well together, and teachers are being given a voice in decision-making. As part of the committee dealing with in-person schooling, while he does not make the final decision, he does make recommendations, Webber said. Educators are making recommendations upwards, and the superintendent and school board are listening to those recommendations to make the final decision, he added.
However, there are still some issues being worked out. “We are putting together what is called an Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which is basically a working document of how our teachers work with the school district. That MOU is still under negotiation, and is not finalized yet. Part of the reason why it is not finalized yet is every time we make a decision, every time a consensus is reached the goalpost moves.” said Webber. “You know that with COVID, every time we seem to think we’re getting somewhere, the goalpost has moved three feet. We used to be at the orange tier then we jumped over the red and went straight to purple. And so as fast as we try to make decisions, things change.”
Update: The MOU has been published as of March 26.
The school board, which works closely with both the district and MTA, also has its own set of goals, according to School Board President Chris Norwood. “We would like to see the students that are most in need get the service that they need, and we would like to keep an eye on and monitor the data in terms of how our students are performing, that means by attendance, participation, and their social emotional health,” Norwood said in a Zoom interview.
It is still going to be a while before all, or the majority of students, return to in-person schooling, Webber said. “Let’s face reality. We are the second biggest high school in Northern California. We have some 3,100-3,200 students. At what point do we fill up the school where safety is no longer possible? How many students can safely be on campus at one time?” Webber said.