Fresno-area parents are angrier with schools — and Gavin Newsom — than most Californians

Ethan Smith is frustrated.

The father of two fears his children are falling behind in their Fresno schools after more than a year of coronavirus-era online learning. The situation, he said, has only improved slightly since Fresno Unified reopened classrooms earlier this month for part-time classroom learning two days each week.

“The two days a week they are pretty engaged,” Smith said in a recent interview with The Bee’s Education Lab. “Then we flip back to distance or an online-only environment, and we’re kind of back to the same challenges of distance learning.

“In some ways, it’s better, and in some ways, it’s harder for the kids because they have to come back home again.”

A new report released last week by the Public Policy Institute of California shows Smith is far from alone. Residents polled from California’s Central Valley are more unhappy with schools and with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s handling of schools during the height of the pandemic than parents in other parts of the state.

In the report, California’s Central Valley included Butte, Colusa, El Dorado, Fresno, Glenn, Kern, Kings, Madera, Merced, Placer, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Shasta, Stanislaus, Sutter, Tehama, Tulare, Yolo, and Yuba counties.

About half of all Central Valley residents polled said they disapprove of Newsom’s leadership on schools during the pandemic. That was the highest disapproval rating across the state. In Los Angeles, about 45% of residents said they disapproved of Newsom’s school leadership. In the Bay Area, Newsom’s disapproval rate stood at 35%. It was 45% in the Inland Empire and 42% in the Orange/San Diego area.

Central Valley parents were also more unhappy with their local schools than parents in other parts of California. However, most Valley residents said they still approved of how local schools handled the public health crisis.

Across all adults in the Central Valley, 60% approved of how their school district handled school closures in March 2020, when students shifted to distance learning because of the coronavirus. The statewide average is 65%. The percentage was only lower in the Orange/San Diego area, at 54%.

The Central Valley had the highest percentage of respondents that believed schools were not reopening quickly enough, at 40%. About 38% of Bay Area respondents and 33% of Los Angeles respondents believed schools were not opening quickly enough.

Forty-one percent of public school parents believe the state has not done enough to assist districts in reopening, the survey found.

Republicans and conservatives across the state were typically much more likely than independents and Democrats to say they remain very concerned.

Learning Loss in Fresno-area schools?

But one area where California parents appeared almost universally united was the subject of “learning loss,” or “COVID slide.”

About 86% of all adults surveyed and 83% of parents said children are falling behind academically during the pandemic, including about 64% who said they fear students are falling behind “by a lot,” according to the survey.

Fresno’s Katie Jerkovich agrees. During a recent interview, the mother of three Fresno-area high school students said she believes schools will need to “do some retention work” to help students get caught up.

“They can not expect us to just throw away the last year and make these kids struggle,” Jerkovich said. “Starting in the fall, everybody, slow down, let’s figure out where the kids are and what they need, and throw out the rule book about where they’re supposed to be because they’re not going to be where they’re supposed to be.”

But not all education experts on the subject of learning loss.

Luz Yadira Herrera, a professor of bilingual education and teacher education at Fresno State, said discussions centered around learning loss oversimplify a more significant issue.

“When other people talk about ‘learning loss,’ well, it depends how you’re framing it,” she told The Bee. “If you’re thinking about learning loss in terms of how assessments might measure math levels or reading levels, that is something else.”

Yadira Herrera said educators should take the opportunity to “step back and consider the problematic nature of testing, especially standardized assessments right.”

“They claim to be able to measure educational attainment; however, those measures are extremely skewed,” she said. “They are really known for a specific kind of student.”

But most parents, regardless of how the issue is defined or debated, remain afraid their children are losing academic ground that won’t be made up in a meaningful way.

“I don’t believe that (my kids) are as far along after the last year as they would have been if we were in an in-person environment.”

The Education Lab is a local journalism initiative that highlights education issues critical to the advancement of the San Joaquin Valley. It is funded by donors. Read more from The Bee’s Education Lab on our website.

This story was originally published May 3, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Fresno-area parents are angrier with schools — and Gavin Newsom — than most Californians."