COVID-19 outbreaks have closed classrooms in the Oakland Unified School District, worrying some teachers that not enough is being done to stop the coronavirus from spreading in schools.
The district had seven classrooms in full at-home quarantine as of Thursday morning. Oakland Unified closes classrooms if there are three or more cases in a class during a two-week period, which might indicate the cases are linked.
Last week, 86 students and 15 staff members in the district tested positive for COVID-19.
"A school like ours, we have only just gotten one or two COVID cases in the last week," Sasha Rockwell, a third- and fourth-grade teacher at Bridges Academy at Melrose in East Oakland, told KCBS Radio on Thursday.
"That might seem like a blessing, and yet, I believe that's because more privileged communities, more affluent communities have organizers that are pushing for weekly testing, and we are not getting that."
Rockwell and two unions representing district employees held a rally on Thursday outside the district headquarters on Broadway, calling on the district to build upon all of the safety measures put in place before the school year started under state guidance.
They want more ventilation in common areas, outdoor lunchtimes for students and voluntary weekly testing for every student in the district.
"We have to make sure that things are safe for our students 'cause, again, we don't want to have to go back to distanced learning," Oakland Education Association President Keith Brown said on Thursday.
A spokesperson for the district told KCBS Radio on Thursday that at-home tests are available on campus for any student who needs one.
“OUSD has done more testing than any district in the state outside Los Angeles," the spokesperson said in a statement. "It is important to note that if we shift to deploying staff to do weekly testing at all schools, that will require us to redeploy staff away from (twice-weekly) testing that is required for modified quarantine testing."
On the same day as the rally, Alameda County public health officials signed on to a letter, alongside officials from 11 other cities counties in and around the Bay Area, reaffirming their commitment to in-person learning this school year.
Officials called for testing as one of the "multiple layers of defense" against the spread of the coronavirus, and the highly contagious delta variant, in schools. They cited the guidance released by the California Department of Public Health, which recommends weekly molecular tests or twice-weekly antigen tests.
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