Teachers, school employees’ unions voice opposition to CCSD hybrid plan

The school district, which has about 307,000 students and 40,000 employees, released a 205-page transition plan Monday night. The School Board meets at 5 p.m. Thursday for a possible vote on whether to reopen schools under a hybrid model.

If approved, students would attend in-person classes two days a week and via distance education three days a week. Families would have the option of continuing with full distance education.

But Clark County school employee unions are citing concerns with reopening when the county is seeing a rising COVID-19 testing positivity rate, saying the school district isn’t prepared to do so safely.

Marie Neisess, president of the Clark County Education Association, said in a Tuesday statement: “CCEA’s position has not changed. We do not support any reopening without a robust safety program in place with testing, contact tracing and proper PPE as well as choice for educators to continue working remotely. The Trustees should not approve any plan that does not include those two key pieces.”

Meanwhile, the National Education Association of Southern Nevada released a statement Monday night that said it stands in “strong opposition” to reopening at this time. The association said the school district isn’t prepared to deal with “the consequences of COVID spread on our campuses.”

In its statement, President Vicki Kreidel said: “We must prioritize human lives and re-opening schools for face-to-face instruction during the current spike would be putting other interests above the lives of our educators.”

And the Education Support Employees Association said in a Tuesday statement that the timeline for reopening schools seems rushed and it’s unclear why.

“At this point, the timeline presented by the District in their re-opening plan is not workable with all of the changes that have yet to be made to ensure staff and students are safe in our schools,” President Jan Giles said. “Positivity rates must be 5% or lower before putting students and staff at risk, and we demand that the Trustees and administrators acknowledge that Education Support Professionals are crucial to the well-being of students. We are not expendable, but that’s the message we are receiving.”

Returning to campuses

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Clark County School District — with the exception of seven rural campuses — has been operating under full distance-learning protocols since school began in late August.

In a Monday night statement, the school district said return dates to campuses and work sites “may be adjusted and could change based on evolving health conditions and forthcoming information.”

If the plan is approved, employees would return to work sites Dec. 1. And schools would be allowed to bring back individual students or small groups to campuses starting Dec. 1 for screenings, orientations and mental health services.

Employees may choose to bring their own children ages 4 to 18 with them during contracted work hours from Dec. 1-18 if their supervisor approves it in writing and if the employee maintains “direct supervision of the child,” according to the transition plan.

The first group of hybrid students — preschool through second graders, sixth graders, 11th graders and 12th graders, and self-contained programs in all grade levels — would head back to classrooms Jan. 4. Full-time, in-person instruction would start Jan. 4 at rural schools and small urban schools approved to operate under that model. All remaining students would return to hybrid instruction Jan. 11.

School Board Vice President Linda Cavazos wrote Monday night on Twitter that trustees saw the transition plan for the first time the night it was posted online. “We received a one hour briefing this afternoon. I have NOT had a chance to read the whole plan yet. I assure you that we will all read the entire document,” she tweeted.

In a separate post, Cavazos wrote she knows she’s not the only trustee who’s reading a flood of emails. “People are upset, and we understand that. Despite the news reports, this has not been discussed or voted on yet.”

The transition plan covers topics such as cleaning protocols, classroom capacity, when employees would be quarantined, what types of personal protective equipment certain groups of employees would use, and how school lunches and busing would work.

The city of Henderson released a letter Tuesday night written Nov. 2 by Mayor Debra March to the board supporting the school district moving forward with a plan to reopen schools.

“School districts both inside and outside our state have safely reopened their campuses using protocols that are designed to protect the health of students, teachers and support staff and CCSD should look to these models as a source of information that can be used to create a plan allowing for the limited resumption of in-person classes by the second semester of the 2020-2021 school year,” she wrote.

Reaction from parents

Rebecca Dirks Garcia, one of the administrators for the CCSD Parents Facebook group — which has about 14,000 members — and president of the Nevada PTA, said Tuesday that comments from parents on the transition plan have been mixed.

But she said one of the common themes from parents focuses on “the direct amount of upheaval on individual kids.”

Dirks Garcia said some parents see a need for their child to receive in-person instruction, even for minimal hours, while others are looking at the details of hybrid instruction and are “not sure it’s worth it enough to mess with what’s already happening.”

Dirks Garcia said she’s hearing a recognition that “this is probably the worst timing possible” in terms of considering in-person classes while COVID-19 case numbers are rising. But “for the families who really see the need for in-person instruction, that need is regardless of what the testing positivity rate is.”

Regardless of the decision the school board makes, the majority of students will spend the majority of their time in a distance learning environment, Dirks Garcia said. “That’s one of the things the plan doesn’t really address.”

Las Vegas parent Christine Wilson said her eighth-grader has been more focused learning from home and is getting better grades. But she said he misses his friends and needs those interactions.

“We think the hybrid plan of a day or two per week would be beneficial when cases trend back down,” she said in an email to the Review-Journal.

Las Vegas parent Erica Downing said if schools do reopen for in-person classes, her children will be there because they’re “super healthy kids” and while her husband already had COVID-19 and it made him horribly sick, her children didn’t catch it.

“However, I feel that in no way should the district force teachers to go back if not comfortable,” she wrote in an email to the Review-Journal, adding they should be able to make a decision on an individual basis like parents can about whether to send their child back.

“Forcing teachers to go back in to schools is not fair,” she wrote, noting it will spur too many teachers to quit or retire early, or understandably cause resentment toward parents who decided to send their children back in-person.

Other school districts

The Washoe County School District — which covers the Reno area and has about 62,000 students and 8,000 employees — is operating this school year with full-time in-person classes for elementary schoolers, and under a hybrid model for middle and high schoolers. About one-third of its students have opted for fully distance learning.

The school board was slated to meet Tuesday night to consider COVID-19 case updates and whether to make any changes to school operations amid growing case numbers.

The Council of the Great City Schools — an advocacy organization for 76 of the nation’s largest urban school districts, including Clark County School District — released a list to the Review-Journal Tuesday of what instructional model other districts are using.

As of Friday, more than 40 districts — including Clark County — hadn’t reopened for in-person learning, although some have allowed small groups of students to return or have plans to reopen this winter.

Note: An earlier version of this story misstated the relationship of Christine Wilson to her eighth-grade student. She’s his legal guardian.

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Contact Julie Wootton-Greener at jgreener@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2921. Follow @julieswootton on Twitter.