A Message From BUSD Superintendent Stephens: Winter Holiday And Planning For 2021

Press release from Berkeley Public Schools:

December 18, 2020

Dear BUSD Community,

On this final day of instruction for 2020, I write to wish you and your family as happy a holiday as possible. I hope that these coming days of school vacation offer some respite and a change of pace.

While we are passing through yet another tough time in this epidemic as the surge continues both locally and across every part of our country, there is at least some light ahead, as vaccines have been delivered this week to some of our local health care workers, and we look forward to the possibility of more widespread availability of the vaccine in 2021.

I continue to be very thankful to everyone in our BUSD community for your diligence in protecting the health of our community. It is particularly hard to enter the holiday period, when we would ordinarily look forward to gathering with friends and family, under another Stay at Home order, but I know we are all determined to continue to do our part to slow the spread of the virus.

Looking Ahead

The Alameda County Stay at Home Order, which was imposed on Wednesday of this week, will remain in effect until at least January 7. We don’t know when the County will be redesignated from Purple to a lower, less restrictive Tier. However, since COVID-19 transmission rates continue to rise in an alarming way, and as a result of the mandatory public health orders, the Board of Education’s January 13th target date for reopening Pre-K and Grades TK-2 program is simply not possible to meet.

This means that we will return in January to Distance Learning, for all grades, and that we cannot say at this point when our schools will reopen. All public school districts in Alameda County are in the same situation.

The Board of Education, at its most recent meeting on December 16, directed staff to continue negotiating with the district’s union partners so that we are ready to open as soon as it is safe and legal to do so. Leadership of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT), our teachers’ union, as well as district staff, have spent many, many hours planning for, and participating in, these negotiations. I appreciate BFT’s partnership as we work through the many complications of a hybrid reopening plan for our elementary schools.

After weeks of bargaining about school reopening, we also now have a clear idea of some differences between the district’s current view on how to reopen elementary schools and the proposals BFT has put forward. BFT leadership noted some of these differences in our positions during the union comment period at the December 16 School Board meeting. Among these differences, some of the more substantial ones are:

• Who Should Teach In-Person. The district has created a process for employees who are at higher risk from COVID-19 to seek a legal accommodation from in-person work. The district believes that this accommodations process provides strong additional protection for high-risk individuals. BFT is proposing that only teachers who volunteer to provide in-person instruction would do so.
• When Elementary Schools Should Reopen. The district believes that we should reopen when the community transmission rate returns to the Red Tier, in keeping with state and county public health guidelines. BFT has proposed that school reopening would begin when the City is in the Orange Tier, and that schools would close again if the City returns to the Red Tier.

• Student COVID-19 Testing. The district is working diligently to create a student COVID-19 testing program. However, because it is not a requirement for reopening, testing cannot be made mandatory for students. The state has also not provided any additional resources to districts to support student testing. For these reasons, the district does not feel that student COVID testing should be a prerequisite for school reopening. BFT has proposed that students must be tested in order to attend school.

Our teachers are performing heroic work this year, as they engage, instruct, and inspire students over remote platforms that are far from ideal. They have my gratitude, respect, and admiration. As I share this information about the bargaining process, I strongly assert my respect for our BUSD teachers and our classified staff, whom we care for and admire, as well as my concern for their safety, alongside my strong belief that our students need to be back in school.

All of this is to say that we will begin in January without knowing when we will be permitted to reopen schools due to health conditions, and also without knowing when we will have labor agreements in place to reopen. The bargaining process is both a legal requirement, and a way of increasing the chances that our school reopenings will succeed.

For those of you who have students in our middle or high schools, please know that we continue to work on plans for a hybrid opening of school for our older children as well. We also continue to work on constantly improving the Distance Learning experience for all children, as we know that Distance Learning will remain a component of schooling for all students for most or all of next semester.

I know that BUSD and all four of our unions remain committed to reaching agreements about how and when to reopen our schools safely. We will keep the community informed about our progress, including our ability to reach each of the milestones in the bargaining process: a Tentative Agreement reached by the bargaining teams, ratification of the Tentative Agreement by each union’s general membership, and then Board of Education approval.

We’re going to persevere through this challenge together, as a community. For the next two weeks, please accept my very best wishes for the well-being of your family.

Sincerely,

Brent Stephens
Superintendent

This press release was produced by Berkeley Public Schools. The views expressed here are the author’s own.