Follow the science: Schools can reopen safely
Dennis J. Ventry Jr., Monica Gandhi and Deborah Simon-Weisberg
March 3, 2021
FacebookTwitterEmail
Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders have unveiled another plan to prod public schools across California to reopen. It provides $2 billion to districts that resume in-person instruction by March 31, another $4.6 billion to address learning loss, and punishes districts that fail to reopen by the deadline.
The plan is bound to fail.
It will fail for the same reason other plans, perks, and persuasion have misfired over the last 12 months: It provides no money and no strategy to overcome the kind of false and unscientific thinking that closed schools a year ago. And because the plan avoids mandating the number of days and hours a school must open to receive new funds, it permits the forces peddling pseudoscience to scare administrators, teachers, and parents into embracing a hybrid model (part in-person, part remote) that would be even
Strangely emotional : Newly vaccinated Bay Area restaurant workers talk mixed feelings
FacebookTwitterEmail
Server Jariya Chankham disinfects a table between customers while working a shift at Farmhouse Kitchen in Oakland, Calif., on June 23, 2020. Recently, food and agriculture workers became eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine in the Bay Area.Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE
Casey Rebecca Nunes, the general manager at Smitten Ice Cream in Oakland, had signed up for every possible notification to alert her about vaccine appointments. But it wasn’t Alameda County, where she works, or San Francisco County, where she lives, that came through with the critical alert instead, it was a bartender friend on Facebook.
Bay Briefing: Schools may reopen in spring, but normal is another question
FacebookTwitterEmail
Miraloma first-grader Colette Schwab, 6, works on homework for her remote class at Midtown Terrace Park in San Francisco in a “Zoom in” demonstration with fellow students.Jessica Christian / The Chronicle
Good morning, Bay Area. It’s Tuesday, Mar. 2, and a year of drought is on the horizon again. Here’s what you need to know to start your day.
A year of school at home
State officials announced a $6.6 billion reopening plan Monday for California schools that would require schools to reopen as soon as April 1 with funding for staffing, ventilation, supplies and more.