California parents are increasingly exasperated over the apparent demise of Governor Gavin Newsom’s push to reopen public schools in the next few weeks, and say they want their kids back in class, as soon as coronavirus conditions allow.
Newsom trumpeted his $2 billion plan to help schools reopen, with districts given until Monday to apply for some of that money by meeting certain conditions.
But many districts say they can’t and there’s not enough money to cover testing, and the legislature hasn’t approved the plan.
Teachers' unions are holding fast, insisting on mass vaccination as a pre-condition.
The stalemate prompted Megan Bacigalupi of Oakland and other parents from around the state to form a new group this week, Open Schools California.
“We’re an amalgamation of local groups across the state who realize that it likely is going to take action at the statewide level for us to get our schools open this school year, and even, honestly, we’re worried about what’s on tap for next fall for our kids,” she said.
On KCBS Radio’s “The State of California,” Bacigalupi, who has boys in kindergarten and second grade, said the evidence is overwhelming that schools can safely reopen, as most private schools and some public schools have done in California.
“We can look to Marin," she said. "We can look to many school districts on the peninsula that have been open and operating with very low transmission rates all school year."
Bacigalupi added that it’s unrealistic for teachers to say they won’t return without the vaccine, when vaccinating them all will take months.
She thinks the state should enact a mandate that when COVID-19 cases and spread drop below a certain point in a given area, schools there must reopen in-person.
Unions say nobody wants to go back as much as teachers do, but not when almost every county is in the most restrictive purple tier, new variants of the virus are spreading and there’s no telling when there will be enough doses of the vaccine to protect them.
