Parents Of Manhattan Beach Students Send School District Letter

Liz Spear
·5 min read

MANHATTAN BEACH, CA —

October 6, 2020

To: Manhattan Beach Unified School District Board of Trustees
Jennifer Cochran, President

Jen Fenton, Vice-President
Bill Fournell, Member
Karen Komatinsky, Member
Sally Peel, Member
Mike Matthews, Superintendent

From: MB Students First Coalition
RE: Planning for a return to in-person education

The MB Students First Coalition is comprised of Manhattan Beach parents and community members who want a return to in-person education for students whose educational needs are not being met with distance learning. We are dismayed with the woeful lack of preparation, planning and leadership that MBUSD has demonstrated for the past several months.

This summer, many of us participated in the Steering Committee and multiple Sub-Committees including Operations, Staffing, SPED/Student Services and Distance Learning in preparation for what instruction would look like during the 2020-2021 academic year. Almost 100 parents, staff and administrative leaders spent dozens of hours over several weeks planning how to implement protocols for in-person education, including social distancing with mocked-up floor plans for multiple classrooms at the elementary, middle and high schools, one-way paths on each campus, and discussions of HVAC systems and plexiglass dividers.

Preschools have always been allowed to operate in Los Angeles County during the pandemic; at no time was there a requirement to close preschools in the county in order to support parents who are essential workers. During the summer, many parents asked why Manhattan Beach Preschool was not re-opening to support the essential workers in our community, and this fell on deaf ears at both the Board of Trustees and the Superintendent levels. It was not until late September that some preschool students were able to return to campus, after six months of not operating in-person.

Because of COVID-19 transmission data in Los Angeles County, all schools were mandated to start with distance learning only at the start of this academic year. However, in early September, the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors voted to allow high needs students to return to in-person education starting September 14. The Los Angeles Department of Public Health further detailed that up to 10% of a school or district’s student population could return to campus on any given day, and that high needs students should be prioritized in this 10%. Based on last year’s enrollment numbers, for our district this means the following:

  • 250 students could return to Mira Costa High School

  • 140 students could return to Manhattan Beach Middle School

  • 65 students could return to Grand View Elementary

  • 55 students could return to Pacific Elementary

  • 50 students could return to Pennekamp Elementary

  • 40 students could return to Meadows Elementary

  • 35 students could return to Robinson Elementary

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health further clarified that high needs students include those with Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), English-language learners, and the youngest students in our communities, or K-2.

We request that the district publish the current enrollments at each of our schools so we know how many students could potentially return to in-person education.

On Tuesday, September 22, 2020, at the MBUSD Special Education Advisory Committee (SEAC) meeting, district leadership had the opportunity to hear from parents of students with IEPs, many of whom were not getting their educational needs met through distance learning. On Wednesday, September 23, 2020 the MBUSD Board of Trustees met, and dozens of parents submitted public comments expressing their anguish that their children’s learning needs were not being addressed by the district. At that meeting, Board members seemed to indicate that the slow pace to re-opening that the district has adopted is not acceptable.

On September 29, the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors voted to open the waiver process outlined by the Governor’s Blueprint for schools and districts to open transitional kindergarten through 6th grade with safety measures in place, and this waiver application became available yesterday, October 5.

In Dr. Matthews’s open letter to the MBUSD community published on September 29 in the Patch, he indicated that he would share plans to re-open to high needs students at the October 7, 2020 Board of Trustees meeting. We question why it has taken the district this long to produce plans, when much of this work was undertaken over the summer before August. In addition, none of these plans has been implemented yet, creating yet further delays.

When neighboring schools and districts have already brought back their high needs students on campus, MBUSD is just beginning to plan to do so.

In addition, in this same letter by Dr. Matthews, he indicated that the second priority tier to come onto campus on September 29 were high school athletes, not a group identified by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors as a high need group. We were shocked that after-school athletic programs were prioritized over the needs of special education students and younger students (i.e., kindergarten through 2nd grade) whose needs are challenging to meet through distance learning.

This reflects poor leadership and decision-making and we demand to know the rationale behind this decision. We also demand that our elected officials, the MBUSD Board of Trustees, produce a reasonable and expeditious timeline for re-opening schools in the district.

To date, our district has not lived up to its end of the fiduciary responsibility of providing accessible education to our children. Our district enrollment has declined by over 10% from last year to this year and continues to decline, which will have significant financial ramifications for the district next year.

We ask that the Board of Trustees hold the leadership of MBUSD accountable for spending our taxpayer dollars and for not producing a re-opening plan that is aligned with what is allowed by the Governor of California and Board of Supervisors of Los Angeles County.

This article originally appeared on the Manhattan Beach Patch