Amid new COVID rules, Roseville school district tries to salvage 5-day in-person instruction

After nearly four hours of deliberation, Roseville Joint Union High School District voted late Tuesday to rush a survey to parents of more than 10,000 students to determine how to move forward with its school schedule. The vote came two weeks after the state changed reopening guidelines and sent the district back to the drawing board with its in-person instruction system.

School board members tried for hours to salvage the district’s current five-day, nearly full-day schedule that the Placer County high school district approved in December — even as campuses just miles away in Sacramento County remain closed.

But the California Department of Public Health released amended school reopening guidance that states “under no circumstances should distance between student chairs be less than 4 feet.”

That Jan. 14 update already caused several school districts like Dry Creek Joint Elementary and Buckeye Union to pause their plans to switch from a hybrid model to a longer day schedule.

And it left Roseville Joint Union officials scrambling to solve what they called a capacity problem at most of their Roseville, Granite Bay and Antelope schools.

“I don’t think anyone was thrilled about the new guidance by the state,” said Interim Superintendent Jess Borjon. “The guidance is tilted towards schools that have not reopened, which is regrettable, but applies to schools that are open.”

The Roseville Joint Union board members unanimously approved a motion to offer distance learning for the remainder of the school year for students who wish to continue classes online at one of the seven high schools in the district. Board members also voted to hastily send a survey to parents to determine how many students are committed to attending classes via Zoom, and how many are committed to attending in-person.

But a second motion that called for the district to implement a hybrid model, comply with the state’s four-foot distancing rule and identify spaces such as gymnasiums and theaters to house additional students in overflow failed. The three newly-elected board members – Heidi Hall, Julie Hirota, and Pete Constant, all of whom have called for safely reopening schools during the pandemic – voted against the motion.

Instead, the board settled on creating a campus by campus decision: If a school site can meet the state’s four-foot minimum physical distance between students who choose to stay on campus, that site will continue five-day in-person instruction. If the survey results determine that a school site cannot meet the state’s distancing mandates, then the campus will revert to its hybrid model.

Most campuses in the district cannot concurrently follow the state’s four-foot distancing mandate and accommodate students five-days a week without using a cohort model.

The district measured classrooms at each high school, according to Borjon. Space is a challenge at Oakmont and Roseville high schools, where classrooms are smaller than Granite Bay High and Woodcreek High. Adelante High School, the district’s alternative education school, will have no logistical challenges if it keeps its five-day schedule.

Borjon estimates that most classrooms can only fit about 22 students and still maintain a four-foot space between students. But with many teachers in the district having between 35 and 44 students per class, physical distancing has proven to not only be a logistical problem, but a safety one as well.

In recent weeks, hundreds of students in the district had to quarantine after being exposed to COVID-19 on campus. The quarantines caused Roseville High School to return all students to distance learning for two weeks as too many staff members quarantined.

Dozens of parents voiced their concerns Tuesday night calling for the school board to find alternative ways to continue the full-day schedule.

The district may call a special board meeting after the family survey results are submitted to determine how to move forward with the schedule.

“The only way we can do this is to do a 72-hour response time,” said board member Pete Constant. “Hopefully it’s very clear to the parents, students and teachers what our goals are. But we have to put all of our effort in this.”

‘I’m trapped’ in the hybrid model

Many of the parents who spoke at the board meeting either in-person or over Zoom said their children did not want to revert to taking in-person classes every other day.

Karen Combest said the change in the state guidance is devastating to students, including her daughter.

“This is going to cripple public school districts who are already open or who are trying to open,” she said. “Private schools can easily handle this with less students and funding. So it is not an equitable solution for the schools in California. Show me a public high school specifically that can do this.”

Combest and other parents said they were concerned about the lack of consistency provided to their children.

“My daughter started distance learning on Aug. 12, then hybrid two days a week on Oct. 12, then five days a week full-time on Jan. 5, and may now be forced to go back to two days a week due to the four-foot rule? Where is the consistency? Where is the science?”

Student Carter Sells asked the district to “let the students choosing not to live in fear stay at school.”

“I’m trapped,” said student Dominic Trujillo said of the district’s fall hybrid schedule.

Oakmont parent Lisa Mendenhall said she was concerned that if the district returned to a hybrid model, most classrooms will have dismally low in-person attendance.

“If we go to this A and B (hybrid) schedule, kids have the option to stay home,” she said. “And we will end up with classrooms that have six to eight kids in them, and other kids at home that could have been on campus.”

Teachers union opposes full schedule

When surveyed about a full five-day model that the board will debate in January, 78% of the teachers in the Roseville Secondary Educators Association said they disapproved of the plan.

President of the association Brandon Dell’Orto said the district has no choice but to comply with the guidance.

“This is why the country is in this situation,” Dell’Orto said of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. “Because people don’t want to follow guidelines.”

If the district chooses not to comply with the state guidance, it could lose its liability coverage, and the district’s insurance company could walk away, officials said.

Several students, who in recent weeks shared their concerns about the district’s move to a five-day schedule during the COVID-19 winter surge, called on the school board to responsibly return to the hybrid model to provide a more stable schedule that won’t lead to mass quarantines and school closures.

Kaneesha Goyal, of the Students for Safety Coalition, said returning to school in what closely resembles a traditional schedule is concerning.

“Nobody wants to see students get COVID,” said Emilee Rosenbaum, a sophomore at Woodcreek High. “You will see that a full-time (schedule) will not work, and students will not have sympathy with the board.”

Oakmont senior Neil Ramesh said he was forced to sign up for in-person instruction to take his International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme classes. District officials confirmed that IB courses, which help students earn college credit, will not be offered through the virtual academy.

“I don’t want my parents to get COVID; they are immunocompromised and they could have serious health consequences,” Ramesh said. “I would feel responsible if I put my parents at risk. But I know there are classmates who don’t believe in masks. And there are members of this board who don’t believe in masks and don’t believe in COVID, but you want me to risk my parents’ lives.”

Gyms and libraries as overflow areas?

While many parents suggested opening overflow rooms for students to keep the five-day, full day schedule, district officials stated there simply aren’t enough buildings to accommodate students across the district.

Borjon said most of the obstacles are technology based.

If the district brings students on campus to sit in libraries, gymnasiums and theaters and take classes through Zoom, it will create campus-wide disconnections, officials said. The district has 10,000 students accessing the district technology at once.

“We have been struggling with the flow of data through Zoon on campus,” Borjon said. “We don’t have challenges plugging into Zoom off campus as we do on campus.”

Board members debated innovative, and sometimes unreasonable, ways to keep students on campus everyday.

Board member Andrew Tagg suggested bringing students to campus regardless of connectivity issues, in hope that the district will resolve those technology issues.

Vice President Scott Huber urged parents to call Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office everyday to ask the state to prioritize vaccines for teachers.

“We must put the kids ahead of adults,” said board member Hirota. “And that’s not a single solution. We must keep kids safe and teachers safe. We must find many possibilities to teach as many kids as possible. And we must support each other in this.”