December 11, 2020
Beth Albiani, President, Board of Trustees
Dr. Crystal Martinez-Alire, Member, Board of Trustees Nancy Chaires Espinoza, Member, Board of Trustees Chet Madison, Member, Board of Trustees
Carmine Forcina, Member, Board of Trustees Christopher Hoffman, Superintendent
Rick Stancil, President, Elk Grove Education Association
RE: Elk Grove Joint Unified School District Reopening
Dear President Albiani, Superintendent Hoffman, President Stancil, members of the Board of Trustees:
We are writing as parents of students in the Elk Grove Unified School District to urge the reopening of schools for in-person instruction by late winter as authorized by the state on October 14, 2020, with a reopening plan approved prior to the reopening of school after the holiday break on January 6, 2021. The Community Update letter dated December 11, 2020 states we will not be returning to In-Person instruction prior to January 21 despite the fact that both public and private schools across California and the world are open. We support a reopening that opens all elementary, middle, and high schools concurrently, provides parents a choice between continuing with distance learning or switching to in-person instruction, and provides students with special needs access to in-person instruction as soon as possible.
Medical professionals advising the parent coalition recommended using theNovember 2020Evidence and Guidance for In-Person Schooling During the COVID-19 Pandemic (“Children’s Hospital Study”), a publication of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia based on a review of published literature and reopening policies, to inform reopening recommendations. Based on the CCEE presentation on December 8, 2020, Dr. Pan stated that when students are in school there is actually less transmission in a community. Furthermore, most transmissions which occur in schools are a result of adult to adult interaction NOT pupil to teacher transmission. A review of other resources, and consultation with both medical professionals and education experts, we are submitting this letter to support the safe reopening of schools for in-person instruction. We recommend the following:

1. Enact EGUSD’s plan for the safe reopening by January 6, 2021. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends schools should reopen. “Lengthy time away from school and associated interruption of supportive services often results in social isolation, making it difficult for schools to identify and address important learning deficits as well as child and adolescent physical or sexual abuse, substance use, depression, and suicidal ideation. This, in turn, places children and adolescents at considerable risk of morbidity and, in some cases, mortality.” Please do not hold out on opening Junior Highs and High Schools; to do so ignores the students most at risk during this time. Taking too long to enact the reopening plan is harming the education and mental health of our children.
2. Improve communication and transparency. The survey questions posed to parents do not accurately reflect our desire for our children to return to school. The guidelines for the In-Person Concurrent Instructional model are unpalatable. The lack of transportation to and from school with shortened days is also unmanageable. The agreement between EGUSD and EGEA on school reopening appears to lack the true desire for a return to school. In January, our children will have been without in-person instruction for 300+ days, this is unacceptable. Please consider asking parents to help construct the survey questions. Further, a prompt report on survey results for both parents and teachers is necessary.
3. Provide an accounting of funding available to the District for reopening, including funding received by the District through the CARES Act Coronavirus Relief Fund. We recommend providing the community with information about the District’s available funding for COVID-19-related expenditures to assist with a safe reopening and an accounting of expenses already incurred, including CARES Act funds, and to seek parent feedback on these expenditures. This parent coalition may wish to assist with fundraising for a safe reopening, if there is a demonstrated need.
4. Request parents, teachers, school staff and students adhere to the same safety measures outside of school as are required at school. While parents are receiving weekly phone and email reminders about following the county safety guidelines, we would like to ensure that teachers and school staff are doing the same. There have been teachers and staff providing instruction while traveling. This not only goes against your district’s advice for us to be able to return to school, but also sends a disappointing message to students, “you stay home, do school, while we’re out having fun.” It has the appearance that district employees do not share our same urgency for getting our kids back in school.

These recommendations are based on the following research conducted by this parent coalition:
1. Schools have successfully and safely reopened in the State of California (including Sacramento County) as well as other states and countries. Hundreds of schools in neighboring counties have reopened safely, as have Sacramento County private schools. According to the Children’s Hospital Study, “schools have been safely reopening by adhering to important mitigation strategies, including mask wearing, social distancing, hand hygiene, and contact tracing.” On October 6, 2020, EdSource quoted the California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly, “We have not seen a connection between increased transmission and schools reopening for in-person learning.” He added that sometimes it takes time to see the trends, “but so far it’s encouraging to see the tremendous effort and planning communities and their schools and their staff has done to ensure it is low risk for students and staff alike.” Even Governor Newsom sent his four children back to private school in Sacramento in November.
AccordingtoCDCdata,“schoolsarenothotspotsforCOVID-19infection.” TheWorldHealth Organization notes on its website that “few outbreaks involving children or schools have been reported and the spread of COVID-19 within educational settings may be limited.”
2. The rate of COVID-19 transmission in schools is relatively low. The Children’s Hospital Study states, “...children and adolescents are at lower risk of serious infection and complications with SARS-CoV-2 than adults.” It also states, “although children of all ages can spread COVID-19, young children are relatively inefficient drivers of transmission.” While teens may have higher transmission rates, we believe they are also more capable of complying with mitigation strategies and therefore should be included in the reopening. According to an October 29, 2020 article in the New York Times entitled Why is Europe Keeping Its Schools Open, Despite New Lockdowns?, The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control found in a study that children accounted for less than 5 percent of all cases of coronavirus reported in the 27 countries of the European Union and Britain, The agency found that school closures would be “unlikely to provide significant additional protection of children’s health.” In addition, at the Wall Street Journal, David R. Henderson and Ryan Sullivan pointed to new research that shows infection rates in schools to be far lower than in the general population. “A group of researchers, spearheaded by Brown University Professor Emily Oster, have . . . made
available the most comprehensive database on schools and COVID case rates for students and staff since the pandemic started,” they wrote. The data, covering “almost 200,000 kids across 47 states from the last two weeks of September,” showed an infection rate of 0.13 percent among students and 0.24 percent among staff. This data was available last September, what are we waiting for? Given such low rates, they made a strong, science-based, cost-benefit argument for opening schools now.

3. The COVID-19 test positivity rate in Elk Grove is lower than established standards for reopening. The Children’s Hospital Study encourages continued reopening of schools “in the absence of linked transmission occurring in the schools within the area and in the absence of rapidly accelerating community transmission (i.e. quickly approaching or reaching 9% or greater test positivity.”) As of December 3, 2020, Elk Grove had 4, 211 cases while Sacramento County had 40, 305 cases. While it is difficult to ascertain the exact test positivity rate for Elk Grove since Sacramento County only publishes aggregate numbers, the Sacramento County COVID-19 dashboard indicates Elk Grove has only 10% of the total COVID-19 cases but has 32% of the county’s population. The rate among children 0-17 is similarly lower than the County total. If we are required to follow guidelines which include the entire county, no matter what our community does to slow transmission, we may not reach the Tier agreed upon in the MOU in this next year. We serve the Elk Grove area and should make decisions regarding school based on data from the community we serve.
4. Mitigation strategies work. According to the Children’s Hospital Study, “strong school safety plans can, and have, mitigated risk for transmission, even within communities with moderate incidence.” Residents of the City of Elk Grove and adjoining areas have already maintained one of the lowest rates of COVID-19 in Sacramento County due to implementation of mitigation strategies, which we believe will continue if schools reopen.
5. Screen time is damaging the brain development of our children. Numerous studies outline the dangers of excessive screen use, including, but not limited to, poor academic performance, obesity, disruptions in sleep, permanent changes to the brain (premature thinning of the cortex), increased behavior problems, and loss of social skills. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no more than 2 hours of screen time per day for children over 2 years of age. Students in our district are spending more than 240 minutes in front of a computer screen not including hours spent on homework at this time. The synchronous and asynchronous proposed learning model may result in as much as 3x the recommended daily amount.
We also have the following questions, to which we hope you can provide answers in writing:
1. What can we as parents in this community do to support the District in their reopening needs?
2. What are the criteria the District is using to determine when reopening is safe?
3. What scientific studies or other resources are the District using to develop these
criteria?

4. What are the main concerns of the Elk Grove Education Association and how has the District proposed to address these concerns?
We urge you to consider these recommendations because of the importance of ensuring our children return to school to continue their education and to help parents struggling to support their children’s distance learning while working. The COVID-19 pandemic has already created unprecedented stress and economic hardship in the lives of Elk Grove families. The reopening of schools would be a big step forward in addressing many of these issues for both parents and children.
We have formed an alliance with the leaders of the Davis Parent Coalition, Reopen San Diego Unified School District, Oakland Parents for OUSD Transparency and Safe Reopening, Berkeley Unified School District Parents, Parent Council L.A. School Uprising, San Francisco Parent Collective and Washington Alliance 4 Kids.
Our goal is to communicate directly with the District and Board of Trustees to further the recommendations in this letter and provide assistance to the District with reopening. The Leadership Committee would like to schedule a Zoom meeting to discuss our recommendations at your earliest convenience.
We greatly appreciate the hard work of District staff and the Board of Trustees to move to a distance learning model in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and to care for our students, as well as evaluate the path to a safe reopening. We further are indebted to our teachers for their work during such unprecedented difficulty.
We look forward to working with you to develop a reopening strategy that works for all.
Sincerely,
EGUSD Parent Coalition Board
Sean Mitchell (Parent, Organizational Development Specialist)                             Anne Spencer (Parent, Teacher and Master of Education).                                  Jessica Enes (Parent, Contracts and Benefits Specialist)                                         Shannon Wiley (Concerned Parent)
Heather Kraft (Concerned Parent, Softball Coach)
Erin Somers (Parent, Licensed Clinical Social Worker)
Ben McPerson (Parent, RN, BSN, CEN, FNP-S)
Dr. Marylee O’Connor Krutz (Parent, PharmD. Clinical Pain Specialist)