‘An embarrassing day for San Francisco’

Public health officials have been offering a path to reopening since September, among other things by giving small groups of the most dangerous students access to school grounds.

More than 100 private schools have reopened in the city, with nearly 16,000 students in the class full-time or part-time, Herrera said.

Yet ‘in 327 days, not a single SFUSD student has set foot in their 21 schools for personal education’, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit deals with the question of whether the district has created a specific plan for learning continuity and reopening, as required by state law. Herrera claims the district’s plan is vague, with plans that include ‘rethinking time and space’ for classroom teaching.

It’s a plan for a plan, he said.

Superintendent Vincent Matthews said Herrera’s allegations have no merit.

“We have an absolutely comprehensive plan,” he said. “We are reviewing different parts of the plan, but the plan is still there.”

Matthews said Wednesday the district has a comprehensive dashboard with the steps needed to reopen. He said the district is ready to reopen the first schools for the youngest and most dangerous students, but the final step in the plan is missing: an agreement with the teachers’ union and other working groups.

He added that the lawsuit was a distraction.

“It’s not helpful when we’re all together,” he said. “Turning on those of us who are trying to solve it is not helpful.”

The union for teachers in the district also filed the lawsuit.

“United Educators (of San Francisco) is very disappointed that the city chose to attack rather than support the school district,” said President Susan Solomon.

The legal challenge was one of many across the country over the reopening of schools, but the only one in which a city sued a school district. In other cases, parents sued districts or the state or unions sued to prevent the reopening of schools.

“We are in a one-time pandemic situation that has faced some challenges for our public education system so far,” said John Affeldt, managing attorney of Public Advocates, a law firm for civil rights. “Unfortunately, many of our society and our political leaders are currently frozen in figuring out how we can move forward.”

The question of whether the courts will consider the reopening of city schools is uncertain.

“Courts do not want to take the lead in being superintendents of education” and “are often distracting public school board decisions,” said Bill Koski, a Stanford law professor specializing in education law.

“But it’s just as much a matter of public health” as an educational issue, Koski said. “Courts may feel more comfortable blowing into public health waters.”

Steve Sugarman, a professor of law at UC Berkeley, said the limited scope of the lawsuit – only a more specific plan, rather than a judicial order to reopen the schools – is a topic the courts are likely to address may pay attention but may not achieve much.

‘The trial judge can instruct the school district to come up with a plan. “This is a first step,” Sugarman said. But “it still depends on the union agreeing to send the teachers back,” he said.

The parents of San Francisco, city officials and others praised the lawsuit, saying they were angry and frustrated at the lack of clear communication and details needed to get the school reopened.

Matthews recently told families that middle and high schools are unlikely to reopen this school year.

“I’m glad the city is suing them,” said parent Joya Pramanik, whose daughter is a sophomore at Lowell High School. “Our children are suffering and it is going to be an injury in their lives.”

Mayor London Breed has become increasingly impatient with the pace of the district in reopening students and supporting the case, although her education adviser, Jenny Lam, is on the school board and is now a defendant in the case.

“This is not the path we would have chosen, but nothing is more important now than getting our children back to school,” Breed said in a statement. “The city has provided resources and staff to prepare our school facilities and to support testing for our educators.”

To help struggling families and students, the city has sponsored community learning centers across the city at community centers to help vulnerable students navigate distance education, but they are staffed by aftercare and community organizations.

School council chairwoman Gabriela López said Wednesday that despite requests, the city has not helped teachers with enough testing and vaccination. Health officials do not require schools to be vaccinated again, but López and Matthews suggested that schools would not reopen without it. She said the city is ‘playing politics’, which is not useful for reopening schools.

“This is an embarrassing day for San Francisco,” López said.

Just a month ago, San Francisco officials announced a partnership with the school district to offer testing to teachers, starting at the district office and then expanding to other sites, with funding through the city.

While Matthews on Wednesday a month earlier criticized the city’s lack of help with testing and vaccination, he thanked the city for their expertise and additional resources.

The city-funded program began testing teachers and other staff in January, but was suspended after test provider Curative raised concerns about the accuracy rate. The district is looking for another company to do the test, with guidance and support from the city.

Meanwhile, public schools in San Francisco are seeing a significant loss of learning, especially among students of color and those from low-income families, although López did not want to address this recently and rather says that students’ learn more about their families and their cultures and spend more time with each other. ”

National and state health officials have increasingly called for classrooms to bring back students, given the negative impact of distance education, including academic decline and mental health issues.

Many public schools in surrounding provinces have been open for months with little or no transfer in the school.

Government Gavin Newsom also urged schools to reopen, saying they can do so safely.

“We have many, many districts that have schools open and could do so safely,” he said, adding that teachers’ vaccinations are not necessary to get students back in class, which the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wednesday reflects. “We can safely reopen schools if we prioritize vaccination for our teachers.”