As children in the tony enclave of Piedmont trotted into classrooms Wednesday, Jolanka Nickerman and her daughters gathered outside a shuttered elementary school in less affluent Albany to rally with other families frustrated at the slow pace of bringing their children back to school as the pandemic drags on.
It is a pattern that has played out around the Bay Area and the state since the academic year began last fall: A Bay Area News Group analysis shows public schools that have reopened are mostly in the wealthiest districts. Those serving children in big cities, or children who come from poor families or families of average means, remain in online “distance learning,” widely acknowledged as inferior to in-person instruction.
And the difference is stark. This news agency surveyed every public school district in some of the Bay Area’s largest counties — Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Marin — and found that 100% of school districts with 2019 median household incomes of at least $200,000 offer students some in-person instruction.
Foothill Elementary School 4th grade teacher Sandy Waite-Lopez teaches her students on Feb. 10, 2021, in Saratoga, Calif. On Wednesday, some students returned to classrooms in the Saratoga Union Elementary District, which includes Foothill Elementary School, for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic forced their closure in March 2020. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
Of districts with median household incomes of $150,000-$200,000, 40% have reopened. But the percentage fell to a startling 16% in districts with median household incomes of $100,000-$150,000, and to just 12% in districts with median incomes of $100,000 or less.
The disparity isn’t lost on parents like Nickerman.
“As someone who stares at my kids on Zoom every day, it breaks my heart,” Nickerman said before Wednesday’s rally to encourage the district’s reopening. The median income in her Albany district is $95,783 — 42% of what it is in Piedmont, a district on the other side of the same county, where schools are reopening. “It’s another example of affluence determining what you get and what you don’t get.”
Parents and students protest along Solano Avenue near the Albany Unified School District Student Enrollment Center in Albany, Calif., on Wednesday, February, 10, 2021. The group held the demonstration to call for the reopening of schools. (Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group)
It’s a similar picture around the Bay Area. On Wednesday, students returned to classrooms in Saratoga, joining peers in the wealthy communities of Los Gatos and nearby Los Altos and Palo Alto, which now is also pushing to open its middle and high schools. Meanwhile school kids in San Jose remain at home, receiving lessons via Zoom and other online programs. The median household income in the Saratoga Union School District is $195,784 in 2019, according to latest figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. In San Jose Unified, it’s $108,893.
Many private schools have long ago reopened their campuses while most of California’s more than 6 million public school students are being instructed online. In San Francisco, 113 private schools reopened while the city’s public school district remains in remote learning. But schools’ reopening status has not been consistently tracked publicly around the state.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration required all public and private California schools to report their reopening status a month ago, but the state hasn’t published the data or provided it in response to requests.
The rich-poor disparity is concerning to researchers who have already raised alarms about data showing significant learning loss among the state’s poorest students since the pandemic spawned widespread school closures.
“COVID has hit our most-vulnerable communities the hardest,” said H. Alix Gallagher, director of strategic partnerships at Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE). The Stanford University-based independent research center found in a study last month that California’s poorer students are falling behind faster since the pandemic. “It’s really revealed all the problems we have with inequities across our society.”
The reopening of public schools has flared into a furious debate between families, teachers, health experts and politicians amid mounting research showing that schools that have resumed in-person teaching with face masks and other safety measures have not seen significant transmission of the potentially deadly virus. At the same time, there is growing evidence kids are falling further and further behind as schools stay closed and children struggle with remote learning.
Amid the state’s horrific winter infection surge, Gov. Newsom introduced a $2 billion Safe Schools for All Plan to spur reopening this month with promises of funding, guidance and gear for schools that return to classroom instruction. It has stalled in the legislature, but the governor said they are close to an agreement on a new plan. Teachers unions and many school administrators have called Newsom’s plan inadequate, saying either infection rates must decline much more, or teachers must be vaccinated first before everyone moves back into the classroom.
Foothill Elementary School 1st grade teacher April Tilles tells her students to maintain social distance before the class at Foothill Elementary School on Feb. 10, 2021, in Saratoga, Calif. On Wednesday, some students returned to classrooms in the Saratoga Union Elementary District, which includes Foothill Elementary School, for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic forced their closure in March 2020. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
The reasons why wealthier public schools are reopening before others are complicated. Virus levels are higher in urban and poorer districts, where many parents aren’t comfortable sending their kids back.
John Malloy, superintendent of San Ramon Valley Unified, Contra Costa County’s third-richest, which along with wealthiest Orinda started welcoming students back Wednesday, said his district’s affluence “has not played into” its decision to bring kids back. But parents have been pushing their district to reopen, even launching an effort to recall school board members who backtracked on an earlier reopening plan.
Superintendent John Malloy is photographed in front of Greenbrook Elementary School on Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2021, in Danville, Calif. The San Ramon Unified School District reopened classrooms to students in a multi-phase, hybrid plan, and expects to see 10,000 students in grades pre-kindergarten through 6th grade return to campuses by next Wednesday. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)
“I believe that every single student in California needs access to in-person instruction, and that we need the support of our state to get there,” Malloy said.
Administrators and many parents in schools that remain closed for now say they have different challenges. Many households did not have internet access or computers, and teachers were called on to create online lessons and find ways to try and keep kids engaged and learning. Some students and parents struggled with the technology.
Kindergarten students line up at Greenbrook Elementary School before the first day of in class instruction on Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2021, in Danville, Calif. The San Ramon Unified School District reopened classrooms to students in a multi-phase, hybrid plan, and expects to see 10,000 students in grades pre-kindergarten through 6th grade return to campuses by next Wednesday. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)
“Large districts have focused much of their time and funding on the herculean tasks of closing the digital divide and making sure students and families have enough food to eat, both of which are more profound and widespread problems in places like Oakland than in the suburbs,” said Oakland Unified Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell.
Urban and poorer districts tend to have higher infection rates because they have more workers in essential on-site jobs with higher exposure and lower pay who live in more crowded housing where it’s harder to quarantine if exposed. Families there are less insistent about reopening than in suburbs with low infection rates.
“A lot of families are concerned about how widespread the virus is in the community,” said Nancy Albarrán, Superintendent of San Jose Unified, where she said just a third of surveyed families wanted in-person learning last fall even before the winter infection spike.
Jessica Trejo, whose son and daughter are in kindergarten and fourth grade at San Jose’s Alum Rock Union School District, is among those who want kids back in school, but thinks it’s too risky now.
“I do not feel the reopening of schools is completely safe just yet unless the children all have access to a vaccine,” Trejo said.
Talmera Richardson, the mother of a fifth-grader at Oakland’s Reach Academy, had similar fears.
“The price is too high,” Richardson said, “so no, my son will not be returning to school.”
Le-Marion Jackson, 10, her niece, Kamilah Carter, 4, and his mother Talmera Richardson stand outside their home in Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2021. Jackson is a fifth grader at Reach Academy and her been learning online. His mother says she’s not ready for him to go back to school, is not safe. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Albarrán added that the “hybrid” learning format used extensively to partially reopen schools doesn’t work well for families who must work outside the home with a schedule that shifts from online to in-person throughout the week. When San Jose Unified reopens — either when case rates fall or teachers are vaccinated, students will be in school the full week.
But schools that take too long to reopen risk losing parents like Kate Kittredge, mother of a kindergartener and first-grader, who moved her family from San Francisco, where the city is suing to reopen its public schools, to Piedmont last year, figuring its schools would reopen sooner.“It’s just heartbreaking to see your kindergartener crying,” Kittredge said, “saying, ‘I can’t look at the screen anymore.'”
Staff Writer Aldo Toledo contributed to this report.
Foothill Elementary School 1st graders follow their teacher while maintaining social distance after a recess on Feb. 10, 2021, in Saratoga, Calif. On Wednesday, some students returned to classrooms in the Saratoga Union Elementary District, which includes Foothill Elementary School, for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic forced their closure in March 2020. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
