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Some Berkeley students return to school after months of shelter-in-place

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Updated  November 9, 2020 8:42am PST
Education
KTVU FOX 2

Some Berkeley students return to school after months of shelter-in-place

Jefferson, Malcolm X and Rosa Parks schools are scheduled to open with limited groups of students. Christien Kafton reports

BERKELEY, Calif. - Some Berkeley students will be returning to school Monday after months of shelter in place.

Jefferson, Malcolm X and Rosa Parks schools are scheduled to open with limited groups of students. Rosa Parks, for instance, is only allowing back 16 students, broken down into two groups of eight. 

Students were chosen based on individual needs.

Schools expect the number of students allowed back will increase by the end of the month.

"It's a moment of hope," Rosa Parks principal Vanessa Flynn said Monday morning. "This is one of the first steps, and as we do this in a very small, incremental, safe way we're gathering data and cautious, we're honing our skills on how we do this, right? It's an unprecedented way of coming back to school." 

School board member Beatriz Leyva-Cutler said it had to make a careful calculation about what would do the least harm to students, returning to class or allowing some to continue to fall behind in distance learning.

"We are holding in mind, the health and well being of all of our students and their families and the household because this is everybody who's being impacted," she said.

At the same time, the school board said they are letting science dictate the return to class. 

"What the science is telling us, what the public health officials are telling us, is the conditions that have to be present in order to safely return to school, and those are the conditions that we are working, our staff really, are working on every day extremely hard with our union partners to ensure are in place so that we can bring kids back to school," school board member Ty Alper said in a YouTube video. 

Students pre-K through 5th grade will be able to go back to school in mid-January.

The school district is planning a wider phased reopening of elementary schools in January using a hybrid learning model.

Before middle schools and high schools reopen, they must have a plan that complies with the state’s covid-19 industry guidance: schools and school-based programs and the city’s health order.