School districts warn that staff absences could hit campuses
Jan. 18—A wave of absences due to the omicron variant is pushing school systems to their limits, and districts have been warning parents to prepare for cuts to services.
Some Kern County schools — Our Lady of Perpetual Help and Mojave Unified School District — canceled classes on Friday due to staffing shortages.
One district, Delano Union Elementary, sent a letter telling parents to prepare for the shift to virtual learning if staffing shortages continue.
"We strongly encourage you to have a plan in place for childcare as this shift could occur from one day to the next," Superintendent Rosalina Rivera wrote.
Bakersfield City School District Superintendent Mark Luque sent a letter to parents on Thursday stating that "staffing shortages are straining our district resources and support." It warned that this could impact school offices, classrooms, after-school program and buses. The letter added that the CARE team was dealing with "overwhelming volumes of COVID-related matters."
Mike Tann, president of the parent club at Hart Elementary School in Panama-Buena Vista Union School District, has been able to see how tough it is for the staff. He kept his daughter home after her best friend tested positive for COVID. He said library staff were working the front offices one day, while the principal, vice principal and other support staff were teaching.
Tann called her teacher to check in about a math test, only to find that 10 students were out. The test was off, but the teacher was working hard and trying to keep her students on track. It seemed like she was working two jobs, Tann said.
"They're all doing their best, but I don't know if the schools can handle getting any worse right now," he said. "They're all on the knife's edge right now."
Bus schedules, and those reliant on them for transportation, have been hit especially hard with this wave of absences. Norris School District announced last week it was canceling all its bus routes for general education students for two weeks.
BCSD spokeswoman Tabatha Mills sent a message to parents letting them know there would be delays for certain routes affecting five middle and junior high schools today. Tann doesn't rely on the buses, but he has received notices of bus route cancellations from Panama-Buena Vista Union School District.
PBVUSD noted on its website that the district is pivoting daily to respond to staff shortages caused by "the flu season, COVID guidance and quarantined staff."
Few school districts have up-to-date COVID numbers, but those that do show a steep rise in cases.
The Bakersfield City School District's weekly COVID dashboard that traces positive cases who were infectious while on campus showed record numbers this last week. It reported 416 cases for the week of Jan. 7 through Jan. 13. That's many times higher than the record set by the very first week the dashboard was started: 120 cases the week of Sept. 9.
There were 173 confirmed cases of students and 243 confirmed cases among staff members. The week also set a record — 667 — for the number in quarantine: 628 students and 39 staff are in quarantine.
Case rates were highest at Rafer Johnson Community Day School (17.4 percent of the relatively small student and staff population), followed by administrative offices (6.7 percent), Downtown Elementary (3.8 percent) and Thorner Elementary (3.2 percent).
The Kern High School District has not updated its COVID dashboard since Dec. 6. That, too, is a consequence of absences, according to district spokeswoman Erin Briscoe-Clarke.
"We are working on updating the dashboard," Briscoe-Clarke said in a statement. "We have been experiencing absences, and the person responsible for updating it has been out."
Tann said his wife receives daily updates from Stockdale High School about COVID cases at their son's school. But more recently, they started to receive more notifications from Hart Elementary, where their daughter attends.
The omicron variant of COVID seems to be particularly good at breaking through where it hasn't for nearly two years.
His daughter's close friends and their parents are cautious, largely vaccinated and boosted and have not been infected. But in the last two weeks, there have been five cases among his daughter's friends — including her best friend.
On the one hand, he said he's less worried than he was by previous waves, including delta, which caused ICUs to fill up quickly. However, he does worry about the long-term effects. His stepfather suffered from post-polio syndrome and deals with its effects decades later.
You can reach Emma Gallegos at 661-395-7394.
