Parents in San Francisco are being told to send their children back into classrooms while teachers instruct them over Zoom from their home...
Parents in San Francisco are being told to send their children back into classrooms while teachers instruct them over Zoom from their homes.
The arrangement has been ridiculed by parents and comes after San Francisco's school district axed plans to rename 44 schools currently named in honor of past presidents they have deemed racist.
Mother Kira Gaber said she's been told to send her kindergartner back to his San Francisco classroom with a laptop and headphones, as his teacher works online from home, and an adult monitor watches the kids in class.
'How is this OK? This is completely not in-person learning,' said Gaber, who doesn't plan to send her son to class with a computer.
'I'm going to send him with worksheets and a coloring book.'
San Francisco County, which has a population of 875,000 had just 26 new COVID cases on Tuesday, according to a pandemic tracking project by The New York Times.
San Francisco's Board of Education was already under fire over the plan to strip the names from third of San Francisco's public schools - a move that was criticized as cancel culture run amok.
School students in California could soon be back in classrooms being taught by teachers at home. Schools in Los Angeles, such as Maurice Sendak Elementary School, began in-person learning this week for students such as kindergartener Nathan Ramos
The decision to allow teachers in San Francisco to teach lessons from home, while their students go back to class, has been slammed by parents (File photo)
Strict COVID-19 protocols are being observed by California schools as they begin to reopen. Here Maurice Sendak Elementary School employee Amanda Anguiano gets tested for COVID-19 on the first day of in-person learning on Tuesday
San Francisco County, which has a population of 875,000 had 26 new COVID cases on Tuesday
In February, the City of San Francisco sued its own school district to force school buildings to reopen, citing a 66 per cent spike in the number of suicidal students admitted to the city's UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.#
Most have been shuttered since COVID hit US shores in March 2020, with reopening classrooms prompting explosive confrontations between some parents and teachers.
California teacher Alissa Piro was suspended from her job at San Marcos High School, 40 miles north of San Diego, on Monday, after ranting about the issue.
Alissa Piro was suspended from San Marcos High School for daring parents who questioned her teaching methods to 'come at me'
Alissa Piro, 39, was captured yelling at students in a video that was later posted to a private Facebook group, and shared on Twitter by an activist group calling for the full reopening of California schools.
Piro was complaining about a plan to go back to in-person learning that has been driven by parents' suing school boards across the state. She suggested the parents didn't know what they were talking about.
'If your parent wants to talk to me about their profession and their opinion on their profession, I would love to hear that,' she says.
'However, if your parent wants to come talk to me about how I'm not doing a good enough job in distance learning based on what you need as an individual? Just dare them to come at me because I am so sick to my stomach of parents trying to tell educators how to do their job.'
On Monday night, the San Marcos Unified School District where Piro has worked since 2016 announced that she had been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.
School principal Adam Dawson agreed Piro's behavior was 'inexcusable' and vowed to address it.
And in March, union boss Matt Meyer, president of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, was caught taking his daughter to a private nursery while publicly railing against parents who demanded schools reopen.
More than a year after the coronavirus pandemic forced California's classrooms to close, some of the largest school districts are finally welcoming back students this week.
But the most populated state is lagging the rest of the country — and in some cases offering options that parents say are unacceptable.
In Los Angeles, students can start going back to school in person, but more than half say they will stick with distance learning.
Reopening schools varies city to city because of California's decentralized education system, where 1,200 school districts must negotiate new contracts with workers.
While educators were among the first groups eligible for vaccines, some districts have let them keep working from home if they or someone they live with is at increased risk from COVID-19.
Across the US, what it means to be back in school looks very different from one state to the next.
New York City, the nation's largest school district, allowed students to return last fall, but the Department of Education expects just one-third of its 960,000 K-12 students in classrooms by month's end.
As of March 29, more than 40% of districts nationwide had offered all students the option to return to full-time in-person instruction, according to the Return to Learn Tracker, developed in part by the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
California ranks last in the country, according to Burbio, a company that monitors some 1,200 school districts, including the largest 200 in the country.
An analysis by the Los Angeles Times found that just 3 million of California's 6.2 million K-12 students now have the option to learn in a classroom, and most are younger children. Even in schools offering an in-person return, some kids will receive only a few hours a week of classroom instruction.
Abraham Lincoln High School is seen in San Francisco. A San Francisco school board has reversed its decision to rename 44 schools that were named after historic figures including American presidents Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson
Former US Presidents Abraham Lincoln, left, and George Washington, right, are among 44 historical figures whose names were to be stripped from San Francisco schools
Last week, the city's Board of Education voted unanimously to suspend its plan to strip the names of a third of San Francisco's public schools.
It had claimed honored figures including Presidents Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and longtime California Senator Dianne Feinstein, had become linked to racism, sexism and other injustices.
The board now said it was reversing the vote to avoid 'frivolous litigation' after being sued for violating the state’s open meeting law with its initial decision.
It initially voted to rename the schools back in January after critics slammed the decision as cancel culture gone too far and others pointed out significant flaws in the board's research.
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