Great News! But we still need your help to make parent voices heard!

We’ve heard some great news this week – the county is now off the watch list, which means we’re on a 14 day countdown to the point where we would be allowed to open our schools.

That’s not a given, of course, but I think regardless of this issue we ALL want to see the Covid rates dropping, for everyone and everything.

Meanwhile, the battle to get our district to pay attention to parent voices in this continues.  Despite the fact that a majority of parents indicated they wanted that in June and now the fact that approval to reopen may be imminent, we have still not seen a plan to do that from our District.

And the latest word from our Superintendent is not encouraging on that:

” Even if we are allowed to return to in-person instruction, it doesn’t mean that we will right away. We have not yet set an exact date for when our programs will return to in-person learning.

If San Diego County passes the 14-day window and county schools are cleared to begin reopening, OUSD will notify families and provide all staff, students and families a minimum of a two-week window before we pivot into hybrid (part in-person, part online) instruction. At that time, we will also share schedules and other pertinent information for what that hybrid format will look like. The transition from full virtual learning to a hybrid model will also give our students, staff and families an opportunity to adjust to the new health and safety protocols required for in-person instruction.”

So, they are not intending to plan to return to full time instruction at any point, yet.  The best case scenario appears to be a hybrid model.

If you remember, that hybrid model plans to have our kids in school for two half-days a week.  How that works for scheduling – for parents who work, for parents who have more than one child who might be on different timings and tracks, etc, etc – is a bit of a mystery to me.

Meanwhile, we HAVE seen some districts that have very thorough and well-thought-through plans for reopening.  Rancho Santa Fe, Del Mar Union, and now Carlsbad have such plans, which have been laid out with specifics on how they’re going to make this safe for kids and teachers as well as how they’re going to deal with the costs involved.

There is no reason we have seen why Oceanside could not do the same.

To try to push this along we’ve put together two waiver request petitions, one for Martin Luther King middle school and one for Lincoln middle school.

The middle schools are prime targets for this given the waiver process is only good up to the 6th grade, and if our middle schools only has sixth graders in attendance, they would have more than enough space for proper distancing.

If you support the idea of returning our kids to full-time in person instruction as soon as it is safe to do so (for both them and the teachers), I urge you to sign these petitions, as well as to pass that word on to your friends – via email, via social media, or via a talk in your driveway!

It makes no difference if you are a parent of a King or Lincoln sixth grader.  The waiver request process includes provisions that require the district to consult with those parents (and teachers) as a part of that process.  The point of the petitions is to get that process going, at which point a determination can then be made on whether the parents and teachers of that school want to go ahead.

Make our voices heard!

Thanks!