Mill Valley School District students, who have not been on campus for in-person classes since March, are facing a challenging first day back on Monday.
Although Marin County is poised to stay in the red tier 2, the state’s designation for “substantial” coronavirus transmission risk, some district parents at Mill Valley Middle School question why the district needs to rush ahead.
“Most parents know it’s crazy to go back before we know the impact of the holidays and cold weather, but the district is no longer asking what we want,” middle school parent Benjamin Paine said Friday.
District officials said they are working closely with Marin County public health officials as the kids prepare for their first week of in-person learning in nine months. The district of 2,662 students includes five elementary schools and the 1,039-student middle School.
“Since August, we have been attending weekly public health trainings,” Superintendent Kimberly Berman said in an email. “The Marin County public health schools team has also reviewed MVMS’ SSSPP and provided feedback, which has been integrated into our current plan.”
The SSSPP, or school site-specific protection plan, is a 30-point safety questionnaire giving details from each school as to how it will address the full range of virus precautions.
Dr. Lisa Santora, Marin County deputy public health officer, said although Marin had been on target for the purple tier 1, signifying “widespread” virus risk, earlier in the week, cases have fluctuated in recent days. Barring a different recommendation from Gov. Gavin Newsom in his virus status preview announcement on Saturday, Marin County is now expected to stay in the red tier at least for this week, she said.
“Our data show us solidly in the red tier,” she said Friday. “This is not yet confirmed, but right now it looks like we’re on track to stay in the red.” Santora said she is speaking to Berman frequently over the weekend to review Monday’s plans.
Meanwhile, however, the first school-based coronavirus transmission in Marin was reported Friday. Marin has had some positive cases at schools, and has had to close some cohorts, but up until Friday, they were all linked to off-campus exposures.
Friday’s report was from the Cove School in Corte Madera, where office staff had gathered to drink coffee.
“It was not a teacher-to-student, or a student-to-teacher transmission,” Santora said. “It was just among office staff drinking coffee.”
She said the report underscores the dangers of asymptomatic transmission, not only in schools, but at all workplaces and indoor restaurants where people gather and, because they are eating or drinking, do not wear masks.
“It’s just people getting less vigilant and assuming that their colleagues have not engaged in risky behaviors,” Santora said. “A lot of our school site-specific protection plans include a requirement to close employee break rooms.”
In Mill Valley, about 220 Mill Valley Middle School parents have signed a petition on change.org demanding the district wait until January to reopen the middle school. Another 570 parents signed an earlier petition basically asking for the same thing.
“Studies show that while younger children are less likely to get infected and transmit Covid-19 as compared to adults, those that are 10-17 years old express transmission patterns similar to adults,” Dr. Seran Kim, a middle school parent and emergency room physician, wrote in a letter last week to Berman.
“Given this data, I would highly recommend separating the elementary school opening with that of the middle school, as was the original plan back in October,” Kim said.
Berman replied that the middle school’s schedule next week will be staggered to allow for maximum social distancing. Monday and Tuesday are set as Zoom remote instruction days for all grades. In-person instruction is planned on Wednesday for sixth-graders only; on Thursday for seventh-graders only; and on Friday for eighth-graders only.
“There will be only about 150 students on campus at a time during these first three in-person days at the end of next week,” Berman said in her reply to Kim’s letter.
While Mill Valley is making its first foray into in-person learning in nine months, other Marin school districts that have already reopened are now pulling back to remote instruction, citing post-Thanksgiving holiday precautions.
The Miller Creek School District said earlier this week it will cancel its phased-in return to in-person learning through December, while Larkspur-Corte-Madera and Kentfield school districts are suspending in-person classes for next week to give time for post-holiday reset.
Santora said the public health department is not recommending such delays or suspensions and that school districts have the right to make their own decisions. She and other officials believe kids are safer at school than at home, where they might have unsupervised exposures to the virus.
“Our schools do offer more of a structured environment,” she said. “Kids are not huddling together without masks when they’re at school. It’s a different behavior when they’re out in the community.”
Although almost all Marin school districts have struggled with their reopening plan, Mill Valley’s process has been particularly fraught. Teachers have taken to the streets twice to demand more safety protocols.
Parents — particularly in the middle school — have agonized over the revisions to academic schedules. Most pressing was an extended distance learning program that is independent of the regular in-person curriculum. Two teachers hired by the district will oversee all the kids in the program, Berman said.
Parents, however, had pressed for teachers to teach kids both in person and on Zoom simultaneously. That would have allowed kids at home — either for medical reasons or for quarantines — to keep up with the same classwork. But the district and teachers said at public meetings they were not immediately prepared to take on that challenge.
“The EDL program, while developed with good intentions, is fraught with challenges,” Kim said in a letter to Berman. “By separating children into entirely different learning systems, it feels as if the middle school children would be attending two truly separate schools.”
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November 28, 2020 at 08:23AM
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Mill Valley Middle School parents at odds over Monday start date - Marin Independent Journal
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