State Superintendent Tony Thurmond announced that public schools are unlikely to reopen this calendar year due to the coronavirus.
California public school campuses are unlikely to reopen for the remainder of the academic school year in response to the coronavirus pandemic, state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said Tuesday in a letter to school district officials.
“Due to the current safety concerns and needs for ongoing social distancing it currently appears that our students will not be able to return to school campuses before the end of the school year,” Thurmond wrote. “This is in no way to suggest that school is over for the year, but rather we should put all efforts into strengthening our delivery of education through distance learning.”
Earlier, Thurmond had resisted suggestions that there was no hope for returning to campus. His letter Tuesday represented a shift of direction.
His statement also echoed remarks from Gov. Gavin Newsom at a midday Tuesday news conference:
“We have more work to do: internet connection, rural issues, and still trying to address the anxiety of parents like me and my wife and millions of others about whether or not kids are going to go back to school this calendar year or not,” Newsom said. “I have been clear in my belief they will not, but let me announce formally what the superintendent of public education believes and what the superintendents believe and expect that announcement in the next day or two.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Arizona schools are doing the same thing.
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I suspect the same will happen in Ohio after DeWine’s presser a couple of days ago.
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Our CA district is contemplating classes via Zoom. For public middle school students, this seems like a recipe for disaster. Why in the world do students need to see each other and be able to show off? One of the only upsides of distance learning is that it impairs kids’ in-class socializing!
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I agree about Zoom.
It’s a perfect example of software that was designed for one purpose (videoconferencing) being inappropriately applied to something else (classroom teaching) — simply because someone recognized there were huge profits to be made.
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Right on. For a few minutes, the agency that sends me as a Span-“special” to regional PreK’s was pushing zoom [mostly cuz they’re not particularly tech-informed, & it “looked good.” (Can you imagine a group of any more than, say– four– 3-4y.o.’s [each w/parent or bbs] getting anything out of a video-conferenced class?… I spent a lot of time at youtube & turned up 3 examples: 2 for 1-on-1 ESL tutorials, & 1 for a group of four special-needs children). The agency quickly backed off. One of our dozen teachers is actually trying it. The rest are producing nice short low-key one-way videos.
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why don’t they reopen in the summer? parents desperately need them to.
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Do you think coronavirus will be gone by summer?
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and teachers who are working online now should also work through the summer?
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RIP, Professor William Helmreich, Sociologist, dead of Covid-19, March 27, 2020
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Yes, condolences to his family and all the other families who have lost loved ones.
I read he had walked every block of Manhattan and talked to people in every neighborhood.
What a true understanding he must have possesed . Luckily he wrote some books about his experiences.
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Not just Manhattan. He walked almost every street of the city of New York. And he wrote a great book on stereotypes: What They Say Behind Your Back.
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I’m concerned there’s no national virus testing effort. They can’t reopen until they start determining which people are infected.
Waiting for the Trump Administration to start working just seems crazy to me, but at the same time individual state efforts won’t work because obviously the virus doesn’t care about state lines.
Until they start a national testing effort all of this is just conjecture. We know the Trump Administration can’t handle that kind of complex and difficult task and some magical market web of private efforts isn’t going to cut it. We need a national government that functions and we don’t have one.
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A significant number of people who have the virus are asymptomatic and won’t be tested but can infect others.
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Fauci said yesterday that 1 in 4 people could be asymptomatic carriers.
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Beyond just testing for infectiousness, we need a test for the antibodies. If we know who’s immune, whether naturally or because they’ve already been exposed, those people could be helpful with necessary tasks like food processing, delivery and sales and maybe even non-professional tasks at hospitals, while those who are still vulnerable could protect themselves.
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China has reported that some people who had the disease became reinfected.
And the FDA approved the use of anti-malaria drugs for treatment of coronavirus, even though there is no evidence or clinical trials. But Trump believes they might work, so that’s good enough for the FDA. He is the president, after all, so why not follow his hunches?
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When and where national, testing policy zealots weren’t needed (education), the self-appointed were active campaigners.
On the other hand, self-appointed zealots for virus testing didn’t surface until immediate profit potential was on the horizon.
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Watching the charter/voucher lobby respond to this crisis is instructive.
Here’s Fordham:
https://fordhaminstitute.org/covid-19-home-learning
They cover Catholic schools, three charter schools in Indianapolis, and Success Academy.
50 million public school students in this country and ed reform has absolutely nothing to offer them except criticism. Even in a crisis, they still rigidly conform to the rule that public school students and families only exist as a kind of phony “control” group for their fake experiments.
The three charter schools in Indianapolis are very popular on ed reform sites. One of the sites started promoting the three schools the minute the crisis started and they parrot the first site.
Public education advocates who do absolutely nothing for public school students- 90% of students- because they’re ideologically opposed to the existence of our schools.
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From today’s NY Times, from an NPR interview with the CDC director:
As many as 25 percent of people infected with the new coronavirus may not show symptoms, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns — a startlingly high number that complicates efforts to predict the pandemic’s course and strategies to mitigate its spread.
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DeSantis has set up check points on the western border of Florida, and he is turning away people from Louisiana. COVID 19 requires a strict isolation policy. Minor restrictions are simply prolonging outbreak, and it will be worse for the economy in the long run.
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This pandemic represents yet another reason why the internet needs to be a public utility.
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Amen.
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More ed reform response to the crisis:
https://educationpost.org/charter-schools-may-be-leading-the-way-during-covid-19/
“Charter schools leading the way during covid 19”
Just amazing how consistent it is- the answer to every question in ed reform is “charters and vouchers”. All roads (coincidentally!) lead to their preferred ideological outcome.
There isn’t even a POSSIBILITY that any public school might do a good job. Three days into they were announcing that charter and private schools had beaten public schools, once again.
They literally could have written these op eds before the crisis even started. The “conclusion” was predetermined.
Keep this in mind if you’re hiring and paying these folks in government- they offer no value at all to public school students and families- none. Public schools exist in this world only to be compared unfavorably to the privatized systems they prefer.
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I don’t need no charters. I don’t even need a computer. I have reams of blank paper and some good textbooks at home, can do proper homeschooling now.
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After the death of a home schooled child in our area, a pediatricians’ study was cited by media. In 47% of reported child abuse cases, the result was the parents removed the children from schools and claimed they were homeschooling.
One in 5 children live in poverty. They get food at school.
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I am no fan of homeschooling. I believe that students need qualified teachers as well as the many opportunities to learn in good well-resourced schools and to learn with children from different backgrounds.
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Did the kid die because of the horrors of homeschooling or because of abusive parents?
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Chicken and egg. If not isolated in an abusive home, at least a chance that outsiders could have intervened. Granted it’s a dicey question. Families should have the right to homeschool if they wish– it’s not “the horrors of homeschooling” & that’s not what Diane expressed, only general leanings, druthers. But that minority of eccentric, controlling families can use the option to hide monstrous longterm abuse [Have you read “Educated”/ Westover, where Mormon influence discourages investigation by local agencies?] At minimum (IMHO), homeschooling families should get regular check-ups by local MSWs.
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Tony Thurmond is a great state superintendent. I appreciate his initial reluctance to predict when schools will reopen, and I appreciate what I heard Fauci say yesterday, that we need to evaluate the situation on a weekly basis. It does in fact look like we will have to stay closed until fall, but that’s a long range prediction, and having personally made many incorrect predictions lately, I am weary of long range predictions. I am hopeful that California will be flexible in light of any new facts or information that may come forth this month. Let’s not be inflexible like the Billionaire Boys and Girls. I hope we don’t have people saying what W. Bush said right before the 2008 financial crisis, “Let’s make sure that there is certainty during uncertain times.”
I hope to see my students in my classroom again, and I will continue to hope because “distance learning” stinks to high heaven. Let’s make sure that there is flexibility and adaptability during uncertain times.
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Thanks, LCT. The best we can say about the present situation is that we don’t know how long it will last or how bad it will get. It’s not embarrassing to admit “I don’t know.” No one knows.
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