Omicron surge worsens teacher shortage, closing more California schools to COVID
BY JOE HONGJANUARY 19, 2022
Fremont Unified School District Superintendent CJ Cammack visits with a fourth grade class at E. M. Grimmer Elementary School in Fremont on Sept. 30, 2021. Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group
IN SUMMARY
The omicron variant of COVID-19 has hit California’s teacher workforce so hard that many schools are weighing closure and in some cases forced to dip into emergency days. The quality of instruction is suffering, but some teachers say they still prefer this to remote instruction.
Last week at Simi Valley Unified School District, northwest of Los Angeles, there were only enough substitutes to cover about half the teachers who stayed at home after testing positive for COVID-19.
“It’s untenable,” Superintendent Jason Peplinski said last week. “It is so bad.”
The good news is that public health experts across California expect the omicron surge to be over by March. But the consequences of the highly transmissible variant and the acute school staffing crisis it has caused could long outlast the spike in case numbers. The teacher shortages and unprecedented absenteeism are disrupting learning, extending the long-term academic fallout of COVID-19.
“But what’s a teacher to do when she has half of her class gone?” Peplinski said. “Do you just keep teaching long division and hope the class will catch up?”
COVID-19 infection rates among students and staff are at all-time highs at many school districts. At Simi Valley Unified, positivity rates among students went from below 1% to 6.5% in the past month. Just in the past two weeks at school districts across California, the numbers of positive COVID-19 cases have tripled over what they were before omicron.
Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco, said public health experts expect that the number of omicron cases will taper off in a month. She said wastewater testing in San Francisco has already shown a decline.
“We’re all praying everything gets better by the end of February,” she said. “That’s the hope.”
But until then, schools will need to endure previously unimaginable staff absences.
Teacher shortages plagued California even before 2020. The pandemic amplified the shortage, and omicron brought it to a breaking point. While many teachers have tested positive for COVID-19 and are required to quarantine, a minority of teachers have actually become extremely sick — creating a lot of mixed feelings among teachers over school closures.
In 2021, K-12 schools accounted for about 18% of workplace outbreaks in California. Schools outpaced health care facilities for COVID-19 outbreaks in the fall.
“With all due respect to the governor, that doesn’t solve a Monday problem. That solves a five-weeks-from-now problem. That’s a joke.”
JASON PEPLINSKI, SUPERINTENDENT, SIMI VALLEY UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT
At Rosa Parks Elementary in the San Diego Unified School District, a third of teachers were out in the first week of January, according to school board president Richard Barrera. Across the district, about 15% of employees were out on any given day since the school year resumed after the winter holiday.
At Simi Valley Unified, the district jacked up pay rates for subs from $110 to $205 a day in early January to prepare for the spread of omicron, but it hasn’t made much difference. Gov. Gavin Newsom last week issued an order removing obstacles to credentialing and retaining substitute teachers — measures that district Superintendent Peplinski called well-intentioned but “laughable.”
“With all due respect to the governor, that doesn’t solve a Monday problem,” he said. “That solves a five-weeks-from-now problem. That’s a joke.”
As some school districts have already closed down schools, Gov. Newsom suggested last week that theymight have to extend their school years to make up for lost time. A spokesman for the governor, however, clarified that Newsom was not proposing extending school years as a statewide strategy.
Hayward Unified in the Bay Area reopened campuses on Tuesday after a week of mostly remote instruction. The district did have six in-person “learning hubs” for students who weren’t able to participate in virtual learning. Dionicia Ramos, a spokesperson for Hayward Unified, said that district officials don’t anticipate needing to extend the school year to recover any lost days of instruction.
Palo Alto Unified School District recruited 800 parent volunteers to fill in as teachers aides for when classrooms are combined due to teacher shortages. Superintendent Don Austin said about 10% of teachers and staff have been out each day, but this fleet of parents has taken the possibility of school closures off the table.
“This is for this surge and the surge after that,” he said. “This is our security blanket.”
Learning lost, again
At hard-hit high schools in California — including within Sacramento City Unified, San Diego Unified and Simi Valley Unified — classes are being combined and relocated to gyms or auditoriums, raising concerns about enforcing safety protocols.
“At least two to three classes are being put together with one or two teachers,” said Kisha Borden, president of the teachers’ union at San Diego Unified. “You can’t adequately supervise over 100 kids.”
In districts across the state, a single teacher might be supervising three or four classes in larger spaces to allow for physical distancing. Students receive little to no instruction, according to both administrators and teachers. Teaching becomes virtually impossible with such a medley of subject-based classes.
