Oregon schools won’t meet governor’s reopening deadlines

Published 12:00 am Friday, March 12, 2021

The Reynolds School District does not plan to meet the deadlines announced by Gov. Kate Brown last week for getting students back in classrooms and is asking the state for an extension.

Although Brown said public elementary students should be back in schoolhouses during or before the week of March 29 and students in grades six through 12 should be back by the week of April 19, Reynolds administrators presented information to the School Board Wednesday night March 10, indicating they would not meet any of these targets.

Reynolds plans to bring kindergartners — its first students back — the week of April 12-16 with the rest of the district’s 10,400 students coming back in phases through May.

Most school districts are bringing half the student body back in buildings at a time, in a plan called hybrid learning. Students will learn remotely the other half of the time, as they have for a year.

Most classrooms are not large enough to hold an entire class and still keep currently required distancing and other safety rules.

Reynolds Superintendent Danna Diaz said the district is requesting leeway from the state on the timetable.

“We received initial new guidance on Tuesday from the Oregon Department of Education with the opportunity to apply for an allowance to phase in Hybrid Learning for our students as long as we have a meaningful, documented plan in place,” Reynolds told staff in a memo.

“We are requesting the state approve the following Hybrid/CDL (comprehensive distance learning) phased-in plan which was developed with input from principals and presented to the Reynolds School Board last night,” Diaz said in the memo.

The Reynolds plan calls for grades one and two, six, nine and 12 to join the kindergartners during the week of April 19-23. The third, fourth, fifth, seventh and 10th grade will get back in the classrooms April 26-30.

May 3-7 students in grades eight and 11 will come back.

She said the district hopes to hear a response from the Oregon Department of Education soon.

Diaz told board members Wednesday night, “We want to remind the governor and the state that this isn’t one size fits all. We want to have a human-centered approach,” she added.

The Reynolds memo to staff said the return-to-classroom plans have been ready for months.

“I have complete faith and confidence that together we can safely shift to providing Hybrid/CDL Learning in the timeline presented in the above plan,” Diaz said.

In Oregon, many teacher and staff unions have pushed back against the re-opening plans, concerned about safety in the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Reynolds staff memo said it had not yet struck a deal with its two unions.

Wednesday night, one director, John Lindenthal, expressed “disappointment” that Reynolds would not meet the deadline.

He apologized for sounding “curt” and said “I greatly appreciate all the staff and all the efforts” to get school buildings ready to open for students.

But he said “I expected us to be a little bit more prepared.”

Despite the short time between the governor’s Friday, March 5, announcement and dates she said students should be back in classrooms, other area districts will meet the governor’s target dates.

Tiny Corbett School District, adjacent to Reynolds, started bringing its 1,083 students back Wednesday, March 10. Gresham-Barlow School District will also meet the targets for its 11,700 students. They said kindergartners and first graders will start April 1, with everyone in school by April 22.

The state’s largest district, Portland Public Schools, also said it would be able to meet the deadlines.

Brown also said new safety guidelines for schools would be coming out no later than March 19. If, as expected, those new guidelines relax safety protocols, that could change preparations for getting students back in school buildings in all school districts.

Currently, schools have to provide 35 square feet of space and six feet of distance for everyone in classrooms. Students can have contact with no more than 100 people per day in school.

If those rules were relaxed, schools might need to move desks back in rooms to accommodate more students, for example, said Christopher Ortiz, Reynolds assistant superintendent.

“We don’t know what the new guidelines” will say, Ortiz said.