The following is a list of Contra Costa County schools who have applied for a waiver to reopen for in-person elementary instruction.
Hilltop Christian School – Antioch
Heritage Baptist Academy – Antioch
Vineyard Academy – Brentwood
Pleasant Hill Adventist Academy – Pleasant Hill
Bethel Christian Academy – El Sobrante
Cornerstone Christian School – Antioch
Contra Costa Christian School – Walnut Creek
CORE Education Academy – Walnut Creek
Golestan Education – El Cerrito
Golden Hills Christian School – Brentwood
The Athenian School – Danville
Tabernacle School – Concord
Wood Rose Academy – Concord
The Seven Hills School – Walnut Creek
Bay Christian School – Concord
The Meher School – Lafayette
Hope Academy for Dyslexics – Concord
San Ramon Valley Christian Academy – Danville
Ygnacio Valley Christian School – Concord
Wellspring Educational Services – Walnut Creek
El Sobrante Christian School – El Sobrante
King’s Valley Christian School – Concord
Prospect Sierra School – El Cerrito
The Mt. Diablo Unified School District (MDUSD), which is Contra Costa County’s largest district, says they will not be applying for a waiver to open any of their schools.
“While our communication with local public health officials and our data monitoring is continuous, at this time, Mt. Diablo Unified School District is not applying for a waiver to reopen elementary schools for in-person learning,” MDUSD Communications Specialist Austin Breidenthal said.
OF COURSE MDUSD ISN’T applying!
Wish I saw MDUSD on that list …
All private schools, good for them.
Exactly. I am a parent at one of the schools on the list. The annual tuition is $32,000. There is every possibility this school will be able to meet all the terms of the waiver. (Although they have told parents their priority is bringing kindergarten in person first, remaining allowed grades TBD) It is incredibly unfair that the waiver conditions are such that public schools almost certainly could not ever meet them this year. It is going to dramatically increase educational inequity in my opinion – I share the belief that distance learning, even well-organized and delivered programs (like the one that private school is currently providing), is far inferior to in-person education for most elementary age students, at least. My other child is at public school and not likely to be in person at all this year, so I expect to see this gap playing out at my own house this school year.
32K. Wow.
I have a PhD. How about I tutor your child for 10 hours a week for a modest 20K, thus addressing the inequality in your household?
i have a child at one of the private schools also. our school already had class sizes of no more than 25, mostly 20, so they are able to adapt easier and make class sizes smaller. i am also an essential worker so i have to work, i cannot homeschool my child. please dont judge us because we are sending our children to private schools. our family is personally middle class and money is tight. i feel for the public schools…how are they going to reconfigure class size when they already have a shortage of teachers, ppe and funding 🙁
Northcreek applies as well.
No… they didn’t.
If they told you they did, you might want to dig deeper on that.
NCA has not applied yet, but they intend to. They are making sure all they have all the boxes checked before submitting their application.
There it is, the teachers union at work…
No sense doing things for the children.
No child left behind. (unless you attend a public school)
@Tugboat
Bingo!
May the Force be with them.
Truly wish them well. It’s a tough call to make.
Angers me to the core that MDUSD is not on that list. Considering I cannot work from home and wasn’t laid off I’ve had to put my kidd in Daycare…which is on an MDUSD campus. They’ve been going before the pandemic and during. There has not been a siangle reported case or incident involving COVID. The Daycare did need to reduce their enrollment by half….from 96 to 48 kids. However it is STAGGERING to me that Daycares allllll around the county are operating without incident. The Teachers aren’t in masks. The kids aren’t in masks. There is 1x monthly deep sanitation and frequent hand washing and hand sanitizing. The kids are able to play on the Elementary School blacktop but not on the play structure … Due to COVID. However….still not a single incident or “outbreak” at ANY Day care I’ve heard about. So why….why can’t schools open????? It makes absoutely ZERO sense that the place where my kids went to before and after school stays open and 40+ kids that are from their school are enrolled and attending but school can’t even open on a modified schedule? It’s BS. All of it is and it angers me to the core. People like me who HAVE to work AND find a solution for my kids to school at home and Daycare. We don’t all live in 2 income and 2 parent households. I’m 1 mom. 2 elementary kids and they are and have been in Daycare while I work and are JUST fine. Open the GD schools already.
Totally agree and same position. It is not right nor is it fair to expect this of parents, not to mention the added cost we incur. Blame the teacher’s union and STOP voting liberal, or else we will have no rights left.
@Mom2Boys and @oh, please
Are you both replying to my comment??
I agree I’m a center director at a preschool with school agers we opened back up at the end on May . We had NO cases of COVID. Everyone has been fine and in good healthy. They need to open all the school. Its hurting our children!! I think that the people that don’t feel safe should just keep their children home and home school them.
Kids Lives Matter!!
The short and long term ramifications of not opening up will be dramatic. Very sad that the MDUSD is so short sighted. It’s the ME generation for many (not all) teachers and union.
It’s not really a tough call to make. Young kids are in childcare in our area, and some of them have been for a long time. Heard of any outbreaks there? Nope. The body of international evidence is pretty large now. Young kids are not a driver of the epidemic. They aren’t totally immune and it is possible for them to spread it, but less so than adults and teens.
If you can protect your staff with real masks, and keep kids in smallish groups, and do things outside where possible, and use HEPA filtration indoors, it works. That’s a small price to pay to avoid the alternative, which is disastrous. What does “virtual learning” mean for a first grader? What does social isolation do to pre-schoolers? This should be a no-brainer.
I did distance ed with my first grader last year. There were a lot of nostrils, tongues, and eyeballs on the early Zoom meetings, but there was a LOT of seatwork and it really only worked for my kid because of heavy heavy parent involvement and oversight. I can tell you from experience that distance education is much harder on everyone than homeschooling.
Too bad for the kids. Kids really need the interaction with others, unless they are home schooled by very caring parents.
Don’t see any Catholic schools. St Cath in MtZ has like ten kids or less per class so that’s weird they aren’t applying
MUSD and MDSUD is going to hold out until after the election
They don’t care about the kid’s just politics
Alameda County is allowing waivers as of yesterday
Suffer the.little children …
I don’t think this will turn out well.
This is hard on the kids, but I can’t say I miss the 57 cars racing up my street every weekday morning, each delivering one kid to the elementary school which is not even on our street.
Little Johnny has an orthodontist appointment tomorrow. There will only be 56 cars. Enjoy the respite.
😉
Not to be an arse but you knew what you were getting into when you bought land near a school.
@Anon In 1958 there weren’t 57 kids at that school, and back in those days we walked to school.
Yeah what Gittyup said. It’s not the kids, it’s the cars. And I think cars have a snowballing effect. More cars make for a less safe walk to school, which parents react to by – driving their kid to school.
The difference now is the kids going to your local school are not all local.
Of course it is all private schools! This is about the teacher’s union of Ca. who is demanding less or no police/security presence on campuses if they are going to open during Covid-19! Kids need to go back to school. Let the teachers wear masks and face shields if they want but go back to work in person and stop demanding other things.
Our Governor will view this as insubordination.
MDUSD…what a pathetic display of arrogance
Why are people so eager to put their kids in harms way? You think people would want a safer environment for the kids but I guess not. oh well good luck kids!
@Clide
It’s just the opposite……parents are eager to get their kids OUT of harms way, and possibly get their entire family situation out of harms way also.
@Clide,
I think it’s partly because kids are in more danger of dying in a car accident on their way to school than they are of dying from COVID. And partly because parents don’t want their kids graduating high school with a third grade education. I have no doubt that teachers are doing as well as they can with distance education, but it’s no substitute for actually going to school with regards to quality of education.
@ Clide BC we don’t believe the risk is that great.. our kid’s have had terrible flu’s strep throat ect and we’ve nursed them through. We have faith that our children will be okay as with any other thing… learning to drive for example… its all we can do but have faith. Do kid’s die driving… yes they do… but we pray for the best. Covid is not a death sentence for kid”s.
we see how this lock down is hurting them far more than a bad cold would
When polio hit kid’s still went to school and went into church heck TB is still out there and scary
this whole thing is terrible for our kid’s… I love being home with my children so don’t tell me I just want to get rid of them
I want them to experience life to the fullest and being home in front of a computer half the day is not life
Thanks MDUSD for taking care of our kids …..their lives matter especially now that COVID-19 cases are rising in kids….I don’t think it’s safe for kids to go back to school yet..they will have many more years to enjoy if they stay safe at home…and protect all the hard workers that you have in the district….MDUSD we will be back stronger and safer…
Thank you Tucca. Remember people this will get better with time. We will not live like this forever. Patience! Patience.
Sorry, but this is so misinformed. Elementary aged kids are in more danger from flu than from Covid. The question is only about whether they will spread it to their elders. And even on that score the body of the evidence suggests strongly that they aren’t a big driver of this virus’ spread. As for cases rising in kids, the headlines about that are super misleading: it highlights a rise in percentage without discussing how low the baseline was to begin with – AND more importantly and egregiously, the underlying data lumps everyone under 19 in the category of “kids.” Which at this point is just straight up malpractice.
If you want good information on Covid in kids, look at https://dontforgetthebubbles.com/evidence-summary-paediatric-covid-19-literature/ where pediatrics experts review and summarize the growing number of studies in the area. Or follow Alasdair Munro on Twitter – he’s one of the researchers.
@ Led,
It’s not the kids getting sick that is the problem, it’s the people the kids go home to. Or the staff at the school. Teachers dont make enough to risk their lives. My mother lives with my family, she is 75, I do not want my daughter to kill her.
“My mother lives with my family, she is 75, I do not want my daughter to kill her.”
Then home school your daughter.
I am here to tell you that the health department will approve public school petitions to seek a waiver to provide instruction face to face, if and when they bother to apply. This is a science first waiver and not an education department decision.
It’s widely acknowledged that the hesitation starts with the CTA.
Parents are an integral stakeholder group required to participate on any waiver application. If you are unhappy contact your Governing Board of Education and present your views to them. Your Governing Board is charged with the responsibility to decide how your District is managed.
These are your tax dollars and if you believe waiting until November serves you best then go right ahead.
In the meantime look forward to the MDUSD resolving this with the continued reductions on staff. Teachers will be priced out of jobs with demonstrated redundancies as they are no longer the professionals in the delivery of education to your student. They gave up that role to the cities with minimum wage staff who they deem more appropriate than they at being physically present. Enter the new phase of Charter schools being the only viable option for public school education as they claim all those facilities no one wants to use.
CDE Watcher…. thank you for the informative post!
Except that the teachers’ unions control the legislature, which is preventing charter schools from increasing their enrollment this year by tying enrollment-based funding to last year’s numbers. So the public districts can just opt out of providing a real education, hemorrhage students, and go on like it never happened. I’m not making this up, though it sounds like fiction.
It’s not “love means never having to say you’re sorry,” it’s “public sector unions mean never facing any consequences for institutional malfeasance” – whether you’re talking about teachers or the police or pilots or whatever.
Why all the MDUSD hate? I don’t see Walnut Creek, Pittsburg, San Ramon Valley, Lafayette,etc.
’cause…. maybe…. this is “Claycord”??? mostly folks in MDUSD territory???
That’s easy, Sherry…..MDUSD is a much worse district than the ones you mentioned.
Sorry Sherry, most folks here think MDUSD is poorly run, way too large, and is focused on indoctrination, not education.
High Schools can’t even apply. De La Salle was locked and loaded to go. Glad I sent my youngest out of state to get a real college experience. Schools at least public schools will not open until the state gets a government bail out from the feds for the states financial mismanagement.
The teacher unions made a deal with our governor 🙄. Day Cares have been opened since Newsom declared they could open for “essential” workers and as far as I know ZERO COVID cases among any of these so called pandemic day cares. It’s a bunch of 💩 that schools are not opened. There are ways to keep kids in small pods or bubbles but the school administrators don’t want to spend the time or the money to get it done. Distance learning is too much for the teachers who most have their own kids at home doing their own distance learning. Some students are doing 90 minutes of Zoom per class on a block schedule. Some kids are doing 3-4 90-minute Zoom classes a day. It’s too much for the kids and too much for the teachers. This is going to burn out a lot of really great teachers and students who thought about being a teacher won’t want to after seeing what a mess this thing is.
I did distance ed with my first grader last year. There were a lot of nostrils, tongues, and eyeballs on the early Zoom meetings, but there was a LOT of seatwork and it really only worked for my kid because of heavy heavy parent involvement and oversight. I can tell you from experience that distance education is much harder on everyone than homeschooling.
Exactly – it’s all the work of homeschooling, but on somebody else’s schedule, with somebody else’s decisions, and far too much screen time.
Teachers are coddled. They make up to 200k after a few decades of easy work, they get tenure, they’re extremely difficult to fire even without tenure, and they moan about exposure to the virus even tho Evelynn down at the Walmart cashier counter sees way, way, way more exposure for far, far less money.
This is half true. Teachers don’t make huge salaries, but the job security is rather absurd, and the benefits are gold-plated and more. I don’t blame a teacher, who knows that he or she has to buy classroom supplies out of pocket, from mistrusting the district to actually provide a safe situation to reopen. I blame the districts for being so dysfunctional that they can’t adjust to a new reality to carry out their real purpose: to serve the students! Instead they adjust everything to maintaining the status quo as the teachers’ unions have shaped it.
Talked to a teacher from one of these schools. There is no way that MDUSD has the funds to take the measures her school can afford for cleaning and disinfecting the air and the infrastructure. Some of the euipment is the same as used in hospital operating rooms. She only has 20 kids, 10 at a time, the kids spending 1/2 their time with an aide. If MDUSD could afford these measures, they would open also.
Some of these schools, to my certain knowledge, are not richie rich. Some are, but not all. It doesn’t really require NASA-like equipment – though I have no doubt the fancy schools are getting fancy stuff. It mainly requires going outside! For surface cleaning, bleach is pretty cheap last time I checked. Obviously the wildfire smoke is a problem with getting outside, but it would be better to have school canceled only when smoke is bad, than to have it basically canceled all time (as far as its value to young kids goes).
With all the time we’ve had for schools to get ready, is it too much to expect that kids K-6 would have the option to attend their public school mostly outside, or with windows open (air quality permitting), in smaller groups that stay together? If you don’t have enough space to do that, then a functioning society would use some of the many, many spaces in our community that are sitting idle through all of this. Other countries have done this. Teachers who aren’t willing to take the risk could have been reassigned to handle distance learning for the families who aren’t comfortable sending their kids in-person. Or you could have a teachers’ aides manage the in-person interaction but under the supervision of the main teacher who prepares the lesson plans and oversees assessment of student work, etc. In other words, they could have been creative. But we just take it for granted that our public institutions are too bureaucratic and sclerotic to adjust their practice to anything new. We are so locked into the employment conditions and structure that nothing can ever pivot to a new reality. It just reveals that in terms of institutional execution, public schools exist to provide and protect jobs for staff, not primarily to serve kids. (And that’s not a statement about people’s intentions: I know teachers want to do right by kids, generally speaking. But the way the institution does or doesn’t make decisions and allocate resources shows it to be true.
Dear Led: I have worked as a substitute teacher in MDUSD since about 2004. Believe me; the air filtration system is COVID-friendly. And to get those old classrooms clean boggles the mind. I’m not denigrating the district. It’s an impossible task with the resources currently provided. Perhaps things were different when you were in a K-12 classroom. Outside in 90+ degree heat? The students go nuts inside, some wanting a/c, some not. So much time wasted on that debate. I cannot imagine outside in spare-the-air and 90* degrees. I take classes at CSUEB in Concord. We have been online since spring, Even though these buildings are newer, I don’t think they will be ready until we are beyond the pandemic. Good luck to us all
Please keep in mind that MDUSD may not have applied for the waiver but neither did Byron, Brentwood, Kinghtsen, Oakley, Antioch, San Ramon, etc. All districts are suffering regardless of the size of the student body. Yes, kids and teachers should be the main focus but not every family is working either. Districts should allow the families to decide what is best but unfortunately the government states what we can and cannot do….
Looks like it’s all of the tuition based schools applying to reopen. Are they doing so for the money or for the students. I hope they put the students safety first.
Not impressed with distance learning.
Fifth grader is suppose to have Zoom meetings from 9-11:20 and again from 12:10 to 2:20 (except Wednesdays). So far for the first two weeks, teacher dismisses each session after one hour and depends on the parent to supervise the home schooling.
DEFUND PUBLIC EDUCATION….
Private Sector Education excels because of competition; though dumb ass Claycord voters love mediocrity and the mediocre people who make-up CTA. Liberalism is truly a mental disorder.
It is so unAmerican to believe that just because someone disagrees with you they are mentally ill. You should have taken a debate class during your education so you could handle opposing views.
“You should have taken a debate class during your education so you could handle opposing views.”
That would be great advice on college campuses these days.
This list is not current. Plus these waiver applications were submitted before the most recent waiver requirements came out. Some schools are still working on meeting all the requirements before they submit their application. Otherwise the application is denied and you have to start over. I don’t think there’s any way that public schools could meet the requirements. You cannot have more than 14 kids in a cohort and a teacher can only work with one cohort. So unless all class sizes are 14 or less, you can’t get the waiver. Even if you try to do hybrid, the teacher cannot work with a different group the other days. You’d need to hire a second teacher.
Based upon what is in the story, I think this will be the “canary in the coal mine test”. If those in the private schools don’t get sick in a few weeks, it should show that District schools would be equally safe if the same precautions are taken. This does does not include the fact that many general population kids come from a more vulnerable segment of society.
I’m disappointed to see the Catholic schools have not applied. I know of at least one them that claimed that they were preparing to do so. I’m guessing the Archdiocese vetoed it. Where can we see the updated list?
a catholic school in WC has barely had any communication with parents whatsoever regarding reopening. they had some half ass 50/50 distance learning schedule which looked like a major pain in the ass for parents. they pay more tuition also. i would be pissed!
Any word on St. Agnes applying?
People are not eager to put their kids in harms way!!! All this craziness is putting them in Harms way. Do you know that if you keep them and your self in a bubble when you come out you will get so sick because your immune system will be down and not be able to handle it. I work with children everyday, I can’t tell you last time I was sick. But if you are that scared PLEASE stay in your house and your kids too. So don’t judge other people for what the feel is right for them and their family!!
Rally to ReOpen Contra Costa County Schools.
Tuesday, September 8 @ 4:30pm-6:30pm
Contra Costa Office of Education, 77 Santa Barbara Road, Pleasant Hill, California 94523
https://facebook.com/events/s/contra-costa-county-rally-to-r/2606851532911875/?ti=as
This is a statewide rally. There are 13 other counties in California that will also have rallies on the same date and time.
https://www.facebook.com/rallytoreopencaschools/
Wear green. Bring a sign.
• What’s the point? The Governor has already used his executive power? The main point is to show there is support for opening schools. So far parents in favor of opening schools have had very little voice. The reason for doing many rallies on one day is to hopefully show that across the state parents want to be heard.
• Why we wear green. Our theme is “Let Them Go Back To School.” The theme is a nod to “Let It Go” which every parent has heard more times than they can count. And “green means go” and obviously its Back To School time so “Let Them Go.”
• We want to keep this non-partisan. We believe there are Republican and Democrat parents who want to be able to send their children back to school. We do not want this rally to become a debate for right vs left or red vs blue or Trump vs Biden. This rally is for ALL parents and teachers who want to get children back to in-person learning in the schools.
• We want this to be a positive supportive rally to give people who support in-person learning a voice. Please promote positivity and try not to engage in arguments. This rally is about being given the choice to let our children go back to school.