The prospect of rising coronavirus cases is prompting Alameda County's largest school district to suspend its proposed reopening date of January 25.
This comes just two weeks after the Oakland Unified School District unveiled its reopening plans. Last week, some parents and teachers protested in their cars at the school board meeting saying January was too soon to be going back to the classroom.
Now, the district agrees.
"The bottom line is there were people who were stressed out about the idea of us opening school on January 25, especially given what’s been happening in the past couple of weeks across the country and here in the Bay Area in regards to COVID-19," OUSD Spokesman John Sasaki told KCBS Radio. "We wanted to give everybody the message that date is now off the table. We still want to open as soon as we can."
But there's no date set.
"Our plan is to reopen schools in phases beginning when our county is in the orange tier of our state’s color-coded COVID tracking system," OUSD Superintendent Dr. Kyla Johnson-Trammell said in an open letter to district families Monday. "Given the recent surge of COVID transmission, Alameda County and most of California being in the most restrictive purple tier, and the coming holidays, it is highly unlikely that we will move into the orange tier in time for the original proposed date."
Officials will spend winter break, which starts Monday, keeping an eye on case numbers. Meanwhile, teachers, instructional aides and even substitutes are getting loaded up with equipment to continue distance learning.
"Laptops, monitors that they can connect to their laptops so that they can actually do their work while keeping an eye on their students while they’re on Zoom," Sasaki said.
Some parents and teachers would rather see in-person teaching canceled for the remainder of the school year.
