Learn at home or school? Clovis trustees tried to create options, but lost gamble

It would be understandable if parents in Clovis feel a bit whipsawed these days. One of their major questions has been whether their children will go back to their schools next month. For a brief moment last week, the answer was yes.

Then that possibility closed on Friday when Gov. Gavin Newsom ruled out in-person schooling for counties that are on California’s watch list for COVID-19 infections. Fresno County is on that unwelcome roster.

Indeed, the central San Joaquin Valley continues to suffer steadily rising coronavirus caseloads. So the question arises: Why did the Clovis Unified School District board think it could actually send pupils back to their campuses when the new academic year starts Aug. 17?

“We wanted to give parents and teachers the option, and that’s why we did what we did,” said Clovis Unified board president Chris Casado of the trustees’ decision on July 15 to offer both in-person and online schooling to district families.

The board said it reached that approach after 70 percent of district parents said they wanted their children to attend school in person.

One can respect the board members’ efforts at good faith, but the coronavirus pandemic is proving more formidable than most Californians imagined. Despite Clovis Unified’s plan to sanitize school facilities, have children practice social distancing, wear masks and keep their hands clean, COVID-19 remains highly contagious, is easily transmitted and is frustratingly resistant to being controlled. It is not going away anytime soon.

Until the hoped-for vaccine is developed and rolled out, most local decisions on social gathering will have to fall under state guidelines if California is to get any safer. For schools, that means remote learning will need to continue where it left off last spring.

Clovis Unified trustees have to see the obvious and work within limitations forced by the deadly illness.

Teacher reaction

The school board earned some ill will with its decision. As reported by Bee Education Lab staff writer Isabel Sophia Dieppa, some Clovis teachers felt the board treated them as expendable parts of the process, rather than the partners they have been over the years Clovis Unified has operated without a teachers’ union.

“Teachers no longer feel they have a voice,” one said. “There was a blatant disregard for our safety and our lives.”

How widespread the sentiment might be is not yet clear. But some of the teachers who spoke to Dieppa said they are thinking about creating a union. Clovis Unified is the largest non-unionized school district in California, and as such, enjoys more flexibility in dealing with its teachers than districts with union contracts.

If a teachers union formed in Clovis Unified as a result, that would be a notable legacy of this pandemic.

Facing reality

To those who continue to believe the public health crisis has been overblown, the governing board of high school athletics in California on Monday canceled the full slate of prep sports for the fall. Among other things, there will be no football Friday nights. CIF did not want to risk allowing young athletes getting infected or passing along COVID-19.

That is another tough blow to Clovis Unified, as it boasts some of the central San Joaquin Valley’s top football teams, not to mention those in other fall sports as well.

Make online work

Clovis Unified was the last major district in Fresno County to decide in the spring that students would not get to finish out the school year on campus. Its stance last week to allow pupils to return to campus also made it an outlier; Central and Selma had already moved their fall instruction online and Fresno Unified was headed there when Newsom made his announcement.

What might allow children to return to their neighborhood schools? When Fresno County is off the state’s watch list for 14 consecutive days.

Until that undetermined time, area school districts must do all they can to ensure online teaching is as robust as it can be.

And though the new school year will start unlike any other, parents can choose to embrace it and enjoy the experience, helping their kids with school work. The goal is to someday look back at this time with no regrets.

This story was originally published July 22, 2020 at 5:00 AM.