Reopening plans are now underway as the San Mateo Union High School District moves forward with the spring semester. San Mateo County’s COVID-19 risk designation was changed from red to orange on March 16, meaning the district can begin enacting Phase 3 of their plan to reopen schools, where all students who choose to will return to in-person learning. Starting March 29, freshmen will be invited back to campus and on April 12, after spring break, all other grades can begin returning. On March 10, Phase 1 began with the district bringing in students with individualized education plans in person.
District staff and the teachers’ association made a return-to-campus agreement earlier this school year. The district has also been working to keep individual campuses informed.
“The district gave all school sites a template to follow in terms of all the things we should include in our return-to-school reopening plans,” said Principal Valerie Arbizu. “One struggle [we’re having] is staffing and making sure we have enough people on campus to walk around and remind students to follow protocols such as being physically distanced and having masks on.”
The district is moving forward with the agreement and is closely following state guidance plans.
“We haven’t asked for anything other than for the district to comply with the guidance from the state,” said SMUHSD Teachers Association President Craig Childress. “If the guidance from the state changed, we would probably meet and negotiate if it affected our agreement.”
The district’s plan to reopen consists of three phases. In Phase 1, students in specialized programs returned to in-person instruction exactly two weeks after San Mateo County transitioned to the red tier on Feb. 24.
“We are first opening for students in specialized education, then opening for our general education students and even then only with 200 to 300 students at a time,” Arbizu said. “[Because] our county [changed] to the red tier, we’re able to open up our phase programs, and it puts us one step forward to let cohorts of students come back.”
Phase 2 allows students in the Middle College program and some voluntary enrichment programs to return, which began the week of March 22. Phase 3 will start the week of March 29 for freshmen and the week of April 12 for sophomores, juniors and seniors.
“We have plexiglass available for teachers,” Arbizu said. “Classrooms are already set up with 12 desks that can be used. … It’ll still be hard to walk into a classroom where you want to see students working cooperatively.”
SMUHSDTA Vice President Carlo Corti says that there’s hesitation among many teachers about returning to on-campus learning.
“In terms of the educational benefits, one of the challenges is that … we’ll still be Zooming and communicating through computers even for students who are here on campus, so I think there’s some educational questions of how valuable that can be,” Corti said. “The other hesitation is that certain teachers have health conditions which put them at a higher risk if they were to contract COVID-19. Some feel like they’re getting the vaccine before they actually feel comfortable being on campus.”
In order to make sure that students follow protocols and guidelines, the school will provide them with training documents that outline health, safety, screening and behavioral expectations. The district has also hired safety specialists to come on campus and educate teachers and students.
The required safety protocols for in-person learning will be rigid: custodial and health staff will disinfect the whole campus every night with sanitization machines and products and students will be assigned individually to designated areas six feet apart during lunch. Students will need to wear a mask at all times, except while eating, and be tested for COVID-19 every three weeks. Staff will be tested every two weeks.
While the state is offering a $6.2 million in-person instruction grant to the district, SMUHSD will not qualify to receive it until schools have opened campuses for at least one grade level, which is a part of Phase 3. Arbizu has some concerns about how the district will continue with their plans.
“[There] is stress and anxiety of coming back as we have a lot of people with small children at home, and no one wants to get their families sick,” Arbizu said. “The SMUHSD is working with the county to get people who are on campus right now vaccinated and then bring all other staff and teachers through to get vaccinated [as well].”
District staff sent a binding survey to families on Feb. 26 asking about their interest in returning to in-person learning, and slightly less than 40% of students from Aragon said they plan to return. Of those students saying yes, 35% are freshmen, which the Aragon administration wants to bring in first for a couple of days, walk them through on-campus guidelines and practice giving safety checks to them each morning before bringing back students from all other grades.
