Fresno, Clovis schools work to head off potential spring break surge as COVID cases fall
Life after mask mandates has been a smooth transition for some in Clovis Unified schools.
Representatives from teachers’ organizations in Clovis and Fresno say a mix of masked and unmasked students and staff seem to exist comfortably in classrooms for now without peer pressure in either direction.
The district voted to stop enforcing its mask mandate at a school board meeting on Feb. 23, a few weeks before California formally lifted its statewide mandate for classrooms.
Students and teachers who choose not to wear masks are also happy to see faces and regain those nonverbal elements of communication, said Bill Buettner, a Clovis High School math teacher and vice president of the district’s Faculty Senate.
Meanwhile, coronavirus cases among students and staff are also declining.
For the week of March 14, the Clovis’ COVID-19 dashboard showed 37 positive cases among students and staff. The following week the total dropped to 31. This past week, case totals dropped even further to 16 as of Friday morning.
“Our experience in the classrooms I think is reflected accurately by the numbers on the COVID dashboard for the district — which is that there are noticeably fewer cases,” said Kristin Heimerdinger, spokesperson for the Association of Clovis Educators.
Fresno Unified School District is seeing similar trends, according to the district’s spokesperson Nikki Henry. While the school’s dashboard does not reflect week-to-week trends, for the week of March 21, the district only received eight positive test results and had a positivity rate of less than 1%, Henry wrote in an email to The Fresno Bee’s Education Lab.
This experience isn’t unanimous, however. Rami Zwebti, a senior at Buchanan High School, said they are seeing a lot fewer masks in classrooms and that some immunocompromised students feel uncomfortable in the new environment.
“I’ve been mocked on numerous occasions for wearing a mask indoors,” Zwebti added in a statement to The Bee’s Education Lab. Zwebti first moved into the district spotlight after being booed by adults at a school board meeting in October for speaking in favor of vaccines.
Dr. Hailey Nelson, a complex care pediatrician with Valley Children’s Hospital, compared the lifting of mask mandates at this stage in the pandemic to taking off your raincoat after a storm. You remove your protective gear when it stops raining, but that doesn’t mean another storm isn’t around the corner.
Fresno, Clovis schools to roll out at-home COVID tests
There are already a few contenders for what that next storm might be, including a new omicron subvariant detected in Fresno and Madera counties earlier this month.
It’s still too early to say whether another surge may strike, Nelson said. The best thing parents can do for now is vaccinate their children who are eligible and make sure their children stay home and get tested if symptoms present, even while allergy season begins.
The state is also gearing up for spring break and a potential spike in cases following holiday travel. On March 26, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the distribution of 14.3 million at-home tests to public and private schools in each county, much like over winter break.
Clovis Unified is preparing to distribute their tests next week before spring break begins April 11, said district spokesperson Kelly Avants.
Families will be able to pick up available tests from school sites in the days leading up to spring break. Avants said following a similar procedure for distributing at-home tests is helping put herself and others at ease.
“Nowadays, if I can say we’ve done something before,” she said, “it makes me feel better. We had to map a lot of uncharted territory in the last two years, but this one is now well-known.”
Fresno Unified, on the other hand, is revamping its distribution process this time around after the district drew criticism from parents and teachers who were unable to obtain at-home tests over winter break.
“For winter break, we received the tests on one day and were asked to distribute the next day – so we had to figure out how we got tests out quickly while students were not on-campus in school,” Henry wrote in an email to The Bee’s Ed Lab. “This time, we’ve already received all of the tests, our warehouse has been able to count them, separate them, label them, and are in the process of delivering them to school sites and departments currently.”
Fresno students and staff will receive the tests in school on April 7 and 8 to take home.
Fresno Teachers Association President Manuel Bonilla said that while teachers are grateful for the availability of rapid tests, they remain concerned about distribution and how at-home test results are reflected in the district’s COVID data.
With rapid tests, the burden falls on families and guardians to report positive tests to schools. Bonilla said he worries that wasn’t enough to ensure people reported their test results to the district over winter break and that some positive tests may slip through the cracks if the district doesn’t give clearer instructions.
“There wasn’t a systemic way to say: By this date, you have to submit X, Y, Z, right?” Bonilla said. “If that’s all it is, again, then I don’t know how proactive it really is.”
In addition to tests, Bonilla said another ongoing priority for Fresno teachers is that the district improves air filtration in its schools, especially now that masks are no longer required.
Last month, The Bee published a story examining Fresno Unified failure for six months to spend any of its $703 million in federal pandemic relief funds to install High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters in its classrooms, despite pleas from some teachers and parents. The investigation also found that when the district tried to address this issue, they chose a machine that didn’t meet public health guidelines.
District officials in both Fresno and Clovis said parents and teachers can expect further details on the distribution of at-home tests in the coming days.
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. Learn about The Bee’s Education Lab at its website.
