Milpitas schools reverse decision to go remote amid rising omicron cases
MILPITAS, Calif. - Some Bay Area schools facing staffing shortages brought on by rising COVID-19 cases want to temporarily move students to remote learning but county and district rules say otherwise.
The superintendent's office for the Milpitas Unified School District sent a note to parents on Saturday informing them that all classes would be held in the classroom, reversing the school district's decision from a day earlier to temporarily go fully remote from Jan. 10 to 17.
"After consulting with the Santa Clara County Office of Education, we learned that we are not able to offer a ‘district wide quarantine’ as shared in our Friday communication. Community quarantines may be declared by county public health," the MUSD Superintendent's Office said in a statement linked from the district website.
At the same time, teachers and staff are testing positive and landing in quarantine.
On Friday, the district superintendent's office shared that the district had 167 substitute teacher positions unfilled, "requiring us to cover classes with other teachers, principals, district office staff, as well as grouping classes together with one teacher. In addition, we had 107 support staff positions unfilled this week."
The back-and-forth left parents and students on edge.
"It's frustrating not knowing," said Esmeralda Madrigal, a mother with two children in first grade, and a third in kindergarten.
She read about the change over the weekend.
"Today is Sunday, so it's kind of hard to plan things for tomorrow last minute," Madrigal said.
If parents choose to opt for distance learning either short-term or long-term, they'll have to sign an independent study contract with their school, according to the district superintendent's office.
Last week, teachers in San Francisco and Oakland schools held "sickouts" claiming their districts were not adequately protecting them from the omicron variant, both school districts maintain learning can and should continue in the classroom.
According to the latest information on the Milpitas school district COVID dashboard, last week there were 129 COVID cases among the district's 10,000 students and 13 cases of COVID among teachers and staff.