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San Francisco public school teachers now have a much better idea of what the upcoming school year will look like.
Late Thursday, the district and union announced a tentative agreement for distance learning. If the deal is ratified, teachers will spend two hours each day doing live classroom interaction with additional training and planning time. They will also receive $400 each to pay for things they will need to teach online, like boosting internet speeds, phone service and equipment.
Teachers and administrators are still negotiating a plan to possibly return to the classroom.
The deal comes about two weeks before the new school year is supposed to start.
Meanwhile in Oakland, classes start Monday but teachers there are still trying to work those details out and students are still waiting for computers.
About half of the district’s 36,000 students do not have computer access. A $12.5 million donation from Twitter and Zynga means every student will get their laptops, but they still have not arrived.
"Once we got all this money we had to order all the computers, and we did that in early June," explained Oakland Unified School District spokesman John Sasaki. "That was two months ago that we did this and we’re still waiting for all these items to arrive. I mean, they’re arriving this week, maybe in the next week."
The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted supply chains and OUSD is competing with other districts across the country that also rushed to order laptops for students this summer.
Sasaki said students will get laptops loaned to them on Monday to start the year, and those will swapped out once the order arrives.
"Those are theirs to keep, and so they can use those throughout their entire school career here in OUSD and then beyond," added Sasaki. "We’re doing what we’re doing, trying to get distance learning in place for everybody."