21% Of SMMUSD Teachers Would Stay Home If Schools Reopened, Drati Says Classrooms Would Not Be Ready
Written by 991KBU on July 15, 2020
As we’re reported … Malibu schools will reopen this fall with distance learning only.
No classroom instruction.
Only computers … books and study packets.
The decision …. says the superintendent Ben Drati … is driven on medicine and science.
He says he had been planning to open with a hybrid of in-person … classroom instruction mixed with distance learning.
But bringing kids back into classrooms is a big undertaking … Drati says.
It would requires additional time and material purchases, to install plastic shields and take other steps to isolate kids inside classrooms that would be radically different from what we have ever seen.
Now … the Santa Monica Malibu school district has released details from the surveys …. from parents and teachers … on what the school community wanted.
If schools had been reopened this fall … it would have been with 21 percent of the teachers staying hime.
Survey results from the Santa Monica Malibu School District show that one fifth of the teachers would not be able to report for classroom duty due to medical reasons … the type of medical reasons that require notes from doctors.
And parents were almost exactly evenly split on which of the three models for reopening …. the three models possible for this fall.
Almost exactly one third each supported fully opening the classrooms … opening with alternating split classes … and distance learning only.
35 percent of the parents supported opening the schools for classroom instruction.
And that almost exactly tracks the percentage of parents who said they need someone to look after their youngest kids … during the daytime.
In Washington … President Doanld Trump pronounced the decision by Los Angeles schools to also use distance learning a mistake.
Said Trump:
NEWSCART 75718 TRUMP LA SCHOOLS
“I would tell parents and teachers that you should find yourself a new person, whoever’s in charge of that decision.”
“Because children and parents are dying from that trauma, too.
“They’re dying because they can’t do what they’re doing.
“Mothers can’t go to work because all of a sudden they have to stay home and watch their child — and fathers.”
President Trump … in an interview with CBS News last night.
Back in Malibu …Superintendent Ben Drati’s decision to keep the schools closed to classroom instruction this fall must be ratified by the school board … when it will meet tomorrow night.
The board is also being asked to declare an emergency … and give Drati the authority to enter into contracts for services, equipment and supplies.
At every regularly scheduled meeting, the Board must vote by four-fifths (4/5) vote of those present to continue the emergency action.
Tye school board meeting starts at 5:30 tomorrow evening … on the school district’s Zoom compiter system.
We have a link posted at the KBUU Newswire.
https://simbli.eboardsolutions.com/SB_Meetings/ViewMeeting.aspx?S=36030435&MID=2976
