Advocates for reopening Sequoia Union High School District (SUHSD) classrooms are looking beyond this spring, when students will be on campuses part time, to the fall when they want to see classrooms fully reopen.

The group Reopen SUHSD, a coalition of parents, students and teachers, held a rally in February asking district officials to resume in-person learning once San Mateo County entered the "red tier," started a petition late last week to give students the option to return to campus five full days a week for in-person, on-campus instruction beginning the first day of fall semester on Aug. 11. The petition had over 600 signatures as of Friday morning.

"This April, our district is taking a first step, but it must be a step in a journey that leads us back to full reopening as soon as we can, not a new hybrid or asynchronous normal," the petition states. "Given the significant learning loss from the past year, it is critical the instructional hours are returned, at a minimum, to the pre-COVID level of 360 synchronous instructional minutes per day. … We cannot begin to imagine the ways another semester — or even a year — in distance or significantly reduced in-person learning would dig even deeper holes for our students."

Students are set to return to classrooms on April 5 so long as the county stays in any tier less restrictive than the "purple tier" (San Mateo County just entered the "orange tier"). A third of the district's more than 9,300 students opted to go back to campuses, according to the district.

Fall reopening

The petition writers are seeking to ensure that, ahead of next school year, that students will receive a guarantee of more instruction than the daily 240 instructional minutes that have been offered this school year. They reference that in spring 2020, the district didn't promise any live in-person instruction.

Tricia Barr, a Menlo Park resident who has two children at Menlo-Atherton High School, helped start the petition because she believes it's critical the district start planning now for a full fall reopening.

"This year of at-home learning with greatly reduced instructional minutes and asynchronous instruction needs to be an anomaly, not set a new baseline for how our district educates our high school population," she said in an email.

Barr said she and other parents have heard from administrators that for the fall, they can't plan for classrooms being filled beyond 50% capacity, and that they're "strongly considering" asynchronous learning because it's "been popular with students and teachers."

"Neither of these concepts take science or the best interest of our students into consideration," she said.

During a March 10 district governing board meeting, Interim Superintendent Crystal Leach said regulations and guidance on how to reopen in the fall is expected to be released in a week or two by the County Office of Education.

For a "100% return" in the fall — meaning all district students would be in classrooms at the same time, the social distancing requirement would have to be far less than 6 feet, dependent upon the size of some of the classrooms and the number of students in the district, she noted.

"This is not a district choice," she said. "We are governed by the social distancing requirements that come from the county." Mask wearing is expected to be mandatory in classrooms through December, she noted.

Leach has been hosting virtual office hours. Her next office hours are scheduled for April 7 in Spanish and April 8 in English.

If the district is not allowed to open at 100%, it will continue to evaluate the best learning model for its students, district spokeswoman Ana Maria Pulido said in a Thursday, March 18, email.

"Although fall planning will be contingent on the county's health and safety requirements, SUHSD is working to open in the fall as close to 100% in-person instruction as possible," Pulido said.

The CDC announced Friday, March 19, that it had reduced the distance needed between students in classrooms to 3 feet, instead of 6 feet. The potential change comes after a study published in "Clinical Infectious Diseases" suggests that 3 feet may be as safe as 6 feet if everyone wears a mask.

After the announcement, State Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park, called on San Mateo and Santa Clara county officials to align with the new CDC guidelines, saying that he would like districts to have the flexibility needed to safely get students back in classrooms.