Yosemite Unified avoids lawsuit, strikes deal to reopen schools full-time for students

A small school district in the eastern foothills of Madera County avoided a lawsuit this week after announcing it would reopen its classrooms five days a week for in-person learning.

A group of Yosemite Unified School District parents sent a letter to the district at the end of March — after Gov. Gavin Newsom released his reopening schools plan that incentivized districts to reopen through grants — demanding a full-time school schedule.

“The education code said schools have to offer in-person learning to the greatest extent possible in California,” attorney Nanette Beaumont said. “We went back and forth with the district lawyer, and, eventually, they understood it was in the best interest of children and wanted to comply with the law.”

The move puts the district ahead of many other California school districts that have reopened in a hybrid model, a mixture of in-person and online learning.

Although, Yosemite Unified parents are far from alone in the push for schools to reopen full-time.

In Fresno County’s two largest districts, Fresno Unified and Clovis Unified, parents have also been urging board members to reopen schools five days a week in person. Both districts have also announced plans to return to five days in-person in the fall.

A lawsuit would’ve been the last resort, Beaumont said, and won’t be filed now that Yosemite Unified did “the right thing.”

“There were many students being harmed by the remote learning and not having the constitutional right to their education, and that’s why we let the district know, time is of the essence and every day matters to these children,” she told The Bee’s Education Lab.

Parents and Yosemite Unified officials, which has about 1,400 students, came to an agreement this week, Beaumont said. There are about 75 teachers in the district.

Elementary students will be returning to school five days a week starting Monday. Middle and high school students will be returning full-time on May 3.

Yosemite Unified has been working to bring students back to a traditional school schedule “for a long time,” Superintendent Glen Billington told the Ed Lab. The district wasn’t able to meet parents’ demands for full-time instruction in March because they were already in the middle of launching its hybrid model schedule.

“To stop and change a plan as we’re getting ready to implement one is hard to do,” Billington said. “It would have delayed things, and we wanted to go ahead and open, and we were also worried about kids changing classes. The hybrid schedule was a check on how things were going to work.”

Going from 6-feet social distancing to 3-feet social distancing has also helped the district accommodate more students, Billington said.

“We all want the same thing — the parents who were upset, and the school, and the kids, want to get back to as normal a situation as we can, as soon as we can,” he said.

Lack of internet access a ‘dire’ need in mountain households

The lack of internet access has been a long-time equity issue that has been exacerbated during the coronavirus pandemic, especially in rural areas. Yosemite Unified was no exception.

“Several households in the mountains don’t have access to internet, and so that is a dire aspect of the children not being able to have equal access to their educational opportunities,” Beaumont said.

Lack of internet is also part of the reason so many students are choosing to return to in-person learning, Billington said. Most of the district’s elementary and middle school students have decided to return.

Out of the 298 students at K-8 Coarsegold Elementary School, Billington said, 251 are returning to in-person learning. There are 356 Rivergold Elementary students returning to school out of its 387 students. It’s unclear how many Yosemite High School students will return because surveys have just been sent out to families this week.

Larger urban school districts in Fresno County, like Fresno Unified and Clovis Unified, have closer to an even split of students returning to in-person and staying online.

Another school district in the San Joaquin Valley, the Merced Union High School District, has reopened five days a week. About 60% of its 11,000 students have chosen to return.

“In the city, you might have neighbors you can go out and play with, but up here, we’re pretty spread out,” Billington said. “School plays a really huge social role.”

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 here.