While Wilk voted in favor of AB 86, he noted that he felt that the fact that such a bill was needed at all when Governor Gavin Newsom could have issued an executive order allowing schools to open. “I believe with or without this bill, school districts that want to re-open will, and school districts that don’t want to re-open, won’t,” Wilk said. “So if this is not a school re-opening bill, what is it? I believe it’s a CYA maneuver by Governor Newsom to get parents to believe he’s doing everything he can for them.”
Make no mistake, nothing in the Governor’s plan for school reopenings actually requires a school to reopen. Our children deserve better. pic.twitter.com/qh0hUgB7sh
— Scott Wilk (@ScottWilkCA) March 4, 2021
The $6.6 billion re-opening package includes $4.6 billion for “expanded learning opportunities” to combat learning loss over the last year, such as tutoring and mental health services.
The remaining $2 billion would be allocated to districts, as well as other educational agencies such as charter schools, for purposes of COVID-19 safety measures, such as personal protective equipment, testing and ventilation upgrades, according to the text of the bill.
To incentivize schools to meet the deadline, AB 86 will dock 1% of the latter funding from a district for every school day on its academic calendar from April 1 to May 15 that it does not provide in-person instruction in accordance with the state’s guidelines.
For counties in the red tier – where there are fewer than seven new cases daily per 100,000 residents and test positivity is below 8% – schools must re-open elementary grades and at least one middle or high school grade to get the money.
Los Angeles County remains in the most restrictive purple tier in the State’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy. As of March 2, L.A. County’s adjusted case rate is 7.2 new cases per 100,000 people, and with a test positivity rate of 3.5%, just above the threshold to move to the red tier, according to Los Angeles County Department of Public Health officials.
On Wednesday, the William S. Hart Union High School District announced that they were aiming to get students in grades 7 through 12 back into the classroom by March 29.
District officials considered concurrent or blended learning for opening schools, brought up as a method of teaching both in-person and at-home students and demonstrated through a set of case studies.The governing board also discussed the backup plan the district has created for the potential outbreak of a strain of COVID-19 should the new system not work properly, which the board added was publicly available.
Other COVID-19 mitigation measures in place for Hart schools include HEPA filtration, masks, plexiglass barriers, sanitizers, and infrared thermometers.
To read the full text of AB 86, click here.
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