San Francisco public school educators made national headlines Tuesday as they announced plans to bring a human banner to Ocean Beach the following day, with talks between union and district representatives slowly progressing and other unions across the state considering similar action.

As SFist noted earlier, classes in the San Francisco Unified School District were cancelled for Wednesday as contract negotiations continued into Tuesday evening. SFist took part in Tuesday’s march, which began at Dolores Park and ended at City Hall by way of SFUSD’s headquarters on Franklin Street. Organizers estimated that 20,000 people were in attendance.

The United Educators of San Francisco announced on social media Tuesday that part of Wednesday’s strike would include a human banner facilitated by artists David Solnit and Andres Amador at Ocean Beach (1070 Great Highway), spelling out “Strike For Our Students.” Participants are asked to wear red and white.

Per UESF’s social media, union members were told to first picket in the morning at individual school sites. The latest info on the strike, including Wednesday’s banner, can be found on the union’s website.

Meanwhile, national outlets are covering the historic strike, including Politico, the New York Times, and the Associated Press. Both the New York Times and Politico have noted that numerous teachers' unions throughout the state are potentially moving toward strikes.

As EdSource reported last year, the California Teachers Association launched a platform supporting 32 California districts through its “We Can’t Wait” campaign to help local teachers’ unions negotiate their contracts and build momentum statewide with mass strikes. Per EdSource, Ken Jacobs, a senior policy adviser at the UC Berkeley Labor Center, likened the campaign to the “Unite Here” labor union, which successfully negotiated new contracts for SF hotel workers at Hilton, Hyatt, and Marriott after 93 days of striking in 2024.

As Politico reports, San Diego has a one-day strike on the books for February 26, and Los Angeles teachers may strike after a recent walkout in January.

As SFGate reports, 95% of teachers at Dublin Unified School District, which reached an impasse in November, voted to authorize a strike last week if an agreement isn’t reached on a final contract. As the blog Abridged reports, teachers in Sacramento said they were prepared to strike last month, with the Twin Rivers Unified School District voting for a strike by 98% on February 2, per the Sacramento Bee.

As EdSource reported in January, many more school districts in the state have stalled negotiations, including Berkeley and Oakland.

“It’s unacceptable that in the ‘Golden State,’ with its vast wealth and resources, our communities struggle with fully staffing our neighborhood schools,” said David Goldberg, President of the California Teachers Association. “This is why educators are coordinating to take a stand statewide. Together with parents, students and our communities, we demand that districts prioritize resources for our students and ensure California leads the country in providing a quality public education for every student.”

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

Previously: Striking SF Teachers Rally In Dolores Park as Tensions Mount Over Deal

Newark Memorial High School in the East Bay began dismissing all 45 of its athletic coaches and assistants at the end of their respective seasons last month, telling them they may be rehired next year as part of a new policy.

As NBC Bay Area reports, the Newark Memorial High School community was blindsided Thursday by the news that all of the school’s coaches and assistants were being let go at the end of their seasons and told to reapply next school year, with no certainty about getting their jobs back. Very little information was provided by the school district aside from the move being part of a new hiring policy.

“Newark Unified School District is strengthening its coaching hiring practices to ensure the safety and well being of students,” said Newark Unified School District’s Superintendent Tracey Vackar, who’s retiring this year, per KPIX. “Releasing coaches at the end of each season allows the district to complete required vetting, background clearances, and mandatory trainings so students are supported by properly qualified adults.”

Per Bay Area News Group, coaches are being released on a rolling basis as their seasons end.

“I can’t help thinking about the negative impact on athletics in general,” Gordon Crosby, who coached swimming and water polo at the school for over 30 years, told NBC Bay Area. “When there are question marks and no consistency in a program, then programs fail.”

“These coaches have been here for so long,” parent Jazmin Padilla told KPIX. “It's surprising. It's a decision that, why all of a sudden are they doing this?”

Per KPIX, while the school has yet to provide any comments to the media, some community members have speculated whether the school district is dealing with legal concerns surrounding a particular coach, prompting routine background checks.

“I think they should just let everybody know if there is,” said Padilla, “just so nobody is doubting or has any thoughts of 'what ifs and buts.’”

Crosby told NBC Bay Area he reapplied for his position but was skeptical others did the same. “Will some coaches say ‘Enough is enough, I’m tired of being jerked around’? Crosby said. “I think it’s hard not to think that way after the way it’s all been handled.”

“I would think that they would have the foresight to see that this is not going to attract quality candidates to a school,” Crosby told KPIX, “but it's going to chase them away.”

Image: Newark Unified School District

This week's notable humans include San Rafael resident, retired SFFD lieutenant, and dedicated volunteer John Chung; San Francisco author and historian Beth Winegarner whose work aims to remember the forgotten; and Walnut Creek's Anya Gupta, 16-year-old founder of Key Future News.

At just 16, Walnut Creek’s Anya Gupta is a dual-enrolled high school and Diablo Valley College student and founder of Key Future News (KFN), a youth-focused news nonprofit with nearly 200 videos on YouTube. According to The East Bay Times, Gupta launched KFN to simplify news for Gen Z, covering topics like tech, politics, and future careers.

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Gupta writes, films, edits, and promotes her content independently while maintaining a 4.0 GPA. She also serves on the Contra Costa Behavioral Health Board and plans to grow her team and audience on social media. Gupta hopes to attend Berkeley’s Haas School of Business after she graduates from Diablo Valley College next year with the ultimate goal of building an informed and empowered community of young people.

I decided to name the channel Key Future News in the aspect that KFN news is the ‘key to your future,’ That’s what we’re going for now — predictions of future industries, what your future will be like, interviewing professionals on their predictions, things to do and know right now to change the future.

San Francisco author and historian Beth Winegarner's work aims to remember the people of San Francisco who’s history has been long forgotten. Her most recent project documents the lives of the forgotten girls who were incarcerated in the city’s Magdalen Asylum, once located where SF General Hospital now stands.

KQED writes that the institution first opened in 1856 by the Sisters of Mercy as a refuge for sex workers and later evolved into a place where “wayward” girls — often petty offenders, unsupervised teens, or anyone deemed “morally suspect” — were confined. Winegarner’s research was sparked by sensationalized newspaper clippings that she found while researching her 2023 book San Francisco’s Forgotten Cemeteries and grew into a larger effort to transcribe registers, collect census records, and name those the system sought to shame or erase.

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The girls’ stories are often heartbreaking or surprising: one ten-year-old stole a purse to buy dolls and candy; another traveled alone, stayed in fine hotels, and rode horses in Napa. Some were institutionalized for racist or arbitrary reasons, like being present in a home where a Black man was present or being labeled “incorrigible” — a term Winegarner believes often masked neurodivergence.

Babies born there were routinely sent to a nearby Catholic orphanage with high infant mortality. Most girls did embroidery rather than laundry, and few left without adult help or marriage. Winegarner aims to restore their identities and ensure they’re not forgotten.

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San Rafael resident John Chung has been honored with the 2025 Richard O’Brien and Mary Ferrario O’Brien Public Service Award for his extensive volunteer work in youth sports, music, and public service.

According to Marin Independent Journal, Chung, who is a retired San Francisco Fire Department lieutenant, has supported San Rafael’s school music programs for over a decade, helping with concerts, providing technical expertise, and organizing transportation and equipment for student performances. He also managed the sound system for the school district’s annual HeadsUp Carnival for 10 years and launched fundraisers to help sustain arts and athletics programs.

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Chung’s background in music includes his longtime role as manager of the professional jazz fusion band Hiroshima, which helped him develop skills in production, sound, and logistics — knowledge he generously shares with local schools.

Chung also stepped in to coach the San Rafael High School boys’ golf team in 2023 to prevent it from disbanding, despite his children never having played on the team. Under his leadership, the program has grown, and he continues to lead innovative fundraising events such as home concerts and speaker series.

In addition to his youth-focused efforts, Chung serves on the San Rafael Fire Commission and volunteers during major incidents. City officials praised his unwavering dedication and the positive impact he’s made throughout San Rafael.

Image via YouTube

Previously: Notable Humans: Susan Kare, Designer Of Mac’s Earliest Icons — And Its Friendly Aesthetic

California will likely soon become the fifth state in the nation to ban students from using smartphones in schools, though the full ban likely would not go into effect until the 2026-27 school year.

Back in 2019, San Mateo High School became the largest school in the country to ban students from using smartphones during the school day. The idea has caught on, as the states of Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, and South Carolina have since enacted similar bans statewide. And now California is poised to join them, as KGO reports Assemblymember Josh Hoover’s Phone-Free Schools Act passed both houses of the California legislature as of this week.  

The bill would still need Governor Gavin Newsom’s signature to become law. But Newsom has already called for smartphone bans in classrooms, so it is widely expected he will sign the bill.

The ban does not go into effect right away. The proposed law gives school districts until July 2026 to come up with their own individual policies to ban or limit phone use by students during class hours. So, once signed by Newsom, the ban would presumably go into effect for the 2026-27 school year, but districts can implement the ban earlier if they choose.

Students’ phones could be kept in a locker, or in some sort of specialized restrictive pouch, and this is up to individual districts to decide. And there are exceptions in the law for medical situations or emergencies.

Yet here in San Francisco, there are already similar rules in place. SFUSD spokesperson Laura Dudnick told the Examiner this month that “Per our current policy, mobile communication devices must be turned off and put away during class time and passing periods, except in certain circumstances such as health and safety reasons or if the device is being used as part of an instructional activity.”

Related: San Mateo High Forces Students To Lock Up Phones [SFist]

Image: Ordinary kids sitting with mobile devices in street (Getty Images)

In case you hadn't heard, a Bay Area school district has been the subject of some national conservative outrage over federal money that it spent on a program that is somewhat misleadingly named Woke Kindergarten.

Just say the word "woke" in the presence of certain red-state voters and you are bound to receive the parroted wrath of a thousand Fox News pundits in return. And that is because the word, once just associated with enlightened thinking about longstanding oppression, has become loaded beyond all rational measure. "Woke" in the minds of many Trump voters is equivalent with "antifa" or any other number of terms that have been demonized and associated with evil liberals, in this case because it connotes indoctrination of kids and teens into progressive thinking — which itself has been conflated with pedophile, somehow, don't ask.

But the culture-war debates have creeped into blue-state school districts, which is exactly how Republican strategists want it. And we've seen it recently with a dustup over a Pride flag in the tiny Sunol Glen Unified School District.

The latest is in nearby Hayward, where at least one school board member and one teacher have waded into the Fox News outrage pool and brought some unwanted negative attention to the Hayward Unified School District.

Glassbrook Elementary, a school with poor attendance rates and even poorer test scores, has been the site of training sessions by Woke Kindergarten — a for-profit program that focuses on "abolitionist," anti-racist education for elementary students, not kindergartners, though its origins are in early-childhood education.

The district is two years into a three-year, $250,000 contract with Woke Kindergarten, and in late January, school board trustee Joe Ramos sparked controversy by suggesting the district had "blown" this money at a school where test scores continued to decline, as the Daily Mail reported.

Ramos also, troublingly, told the assembled people at the school board meeting, "Some of what you said today is alarming to me. Some of these parents here, they should take a rope and string you up." This was in an exchange with Sandra Escobedo, director of supplemental and concentration services, who was fielding questions about the district's budget.

This was followed by a February 3 Chronicle piece, in which a teacher at Glassbrook sought to blow up the issue further, expressing his concern with the Woke Kindergarten program.

Teacher Tiger Craven-Neeley, a self-described "gay moderate," questioned some of the tenets of the Woke Kindergarten curriculum, which include "disrupting whiteness."

"What does that mean?” Craven-Neeley asks. “I just want to know, what does that mean for a third-grade classroom?”

Craven-Neeley said he posed this question to one of the Woke Kindergarten trainers, and this got him banned from attending future training sessions. He says he also questioned the trainer's use of the phrase, "the so-called United States."

Craven-Neeley, echoing Ramos, the school board member, questioned whether this program was a wise expenditure given that the students — who are 80% Hispanic/Latinx, and two thirds are English learners — are so behind other kids their age in reading proficiency, not to mention math. Only 12% are currently reading English at grade level, he said.

Now, as the Chronicle reports today, Craven-Neeley was put on administrative leave as of Thursday, and was told to turn in his keys. Administrators said this was over "allegations of unprofessional conduct," and it seems pretty obviously linked to Craven-Neeley deciding to speak out to the Chronicle.

A district spokesperson, Michael Bazeley, told the Chronicle that the news coverage, which prompted a wave of negative coverage in the right-wing press, brought with it dozens of "threatening and racist" messages aimed at other teachers and administrators.

"I don’t think any teacher or staff member wakes up expecting to be dragged through the mud of the national media," Bazeley tells the paper. "They’ve been very resilient, but it has taken its toll."

The district has defended the addition of the "Woke" curriculum, saying they hoped it would help boost attendance, at least — with 44% of students considered chronically absent last year.

"We need to try something else,” says bilingual kindergarten teacher Christina Aguilera, speaking to the Chronicle. "If we just focus on academics, it’s not working. There is no one magic pill that will raise test scores... We didn’t just do what everybody expected us to do, and I’m really proud of that.”

And sixth-grade teacher Michele Mason also defended the Woke Kindergarten trainings to the Chronicle, calling them "a positive experience” for most of the staff.

The right-wing media has also seized on the founder of Woke Kindergarten — whose website is a bit spartan, but refers to things like "lil comrades," and "teach[ing] Palestine." Their name is Akiea "Ki" Gross (they/them), and Gross is a Black former kindergarten teacher residing in Brooklyn who says the program is focused on "supporting children, families, educators and organizations in their commitment to abolitionist early education and pro-black and queer and trans liberation."

Previously: Tiny East Bay School District Becomes Latest to Wade Into Culture War Over Pride Flag

The good news is that SFUSD is scrapping its wildly ineffective EmPower payroll system. The bad news is that they're also likely to scrap 900 job positions too, but at least it means they probably won’t shut down any schools.

About two years ago this time, the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) was looking at an apparent $125 million deficit, and things sure appeared bleak. But the district has since added a new superintendent, and in October, gave teachers a substantial pay raise in order to avert a strike. So where do things stand now?

Erm, the Chronicle reports that SFUSD is now running a deficit of more than $400 million. And at tonight’s school board meeting, the Chronicle also notes that Superintendent Matt Wayne will propose cutting 900 jobs from the district’s upcoming budget, which still will not close the entire deficit gap.

Wayne is expected to present this 900-layoff plan at Tuesday night’s school board meeting in a slide show presentation which the Chronicle has obtained, and in which Wayne says the district spent its state and federal pandemic aid too profligately amidst the district’s declining student enrollment.

“Our previous (relative) abundance of resources have masked our budget issues,” Wayne’s presentation will say, according to the Chronicle. “We cannot expect the City or anyone else to come in and ‘save us.’ ”

And it may be somewhat more painless that Wayne is avoiding layoffs, and instead just declining to fill hundreds of open positions. So potentially no pink slips, but that’s not a guarantee. The Chron describes the planned cuts as being to “900 already vacant positions,” and adds “It’s unclear whether layoffs will become part of the plan.”

The true size of the projected deficit is currently $421 million by the 2025-2026 school year, out of an overall $1.2 billion budget.

But you can’t just blame this all on teacher pay raises. Mission Local reported Monday that the district is finally getting rid of its disastrous EmPower payroll system, which has caused missed paychecks galore throughout the district. Attempts to fix that floundering system have resulted in the district blowing an estimated $40 million in consultant fixes, per Mission Local, and has led to headlines like “SF Unified Is Spending $2.8 Million on a Consultant to Fix Another Consultant's Error.” You also have oddball administrative calls like the still-open school that has only 11 students, which is why teachers blame the district’s executive bloat for the soaring deficits.

Wayne’s Tuesday night presentation doesn’t mark the end of this saga, but rather the beginning. The district needs to decide by March whether it will be laying off any teachers, as that’s when pink slips have to go out for the following academic school year. And Wayne’s plan does avoid any school closures, a move that tends to bring lawsuits, state probes, and significant community backlash.

Tuesday night’s SFUSD school board meeting is at 6:30 p.m., and will be broadcast live on SFGovTV2.

Related: Yes, SFUSD is Running a Huge Deficit — But So Are Other Districts All Over the State

Image: Steven Bracco, Hoodline

The Head-Royce School has won permission to expand their Oakland campus from 14 to 22 acres, despite their neighbors’ concern that the expansion could create additional wildfire risk.

If you’re not familiar with the Head-Royce School in Oakland’s Oakmore District, it’s a K-12 school that was established in 1887, but became the private prep school that it is today with the 1979 merger of the Anna Head School for Girls and the adjacent Royce School for boys. It’s a fairly large 14-acre campus, and has around 900 students. But with enrollment dwindling at Oakland’s public schools, Head-Royce thinks it can expand its enrollment to more than 1,200 students over the next two decades.

Getting permission to do so is a whole other challenge. For over a year, the school has faced neighborhood opposition to the plans to expand the campus from 14 acres, using eight acres of property it already owns across the street — with some just saying that 300 more students is too many.

But the Chronicle reports that Oakland City Council unanimously approved the expansion Tuesday, allowing Head-Royce to build 11 new buildings on the site of the former Lincoln Children’s Center, and to build an underground pedestrian tunnel beneath Lincoln Avenue.

Many neighbors were opposed, saying the area is a wildfire danger zone, and the additional expansion would vastly complicate any necessary wildfire evacuation efforts.

One neighbor even showed the council a video of the 1991 Oakland Hills fire, saying the video depicts “exactly what’s involved when you have to evacuate, when you have cars coming down, you have people running, you have utter chaos.”

But the council was satisfied that Head-Royce would submit a wildfire emergency evacuation draft plan. Councilmember Janani Ramachandran, who represents that district, added  amendments to the approval that included noise mitigation efforts during construction, requirements for enrollment reports, and limits on the use of the proposed performing arts center that ensure it can only be used for school purposes.

While the expansion was approved, the Head-Royce School has not indicated when it will break ground on these plans.

Related: Oakland School Board Reverses Course, Won't Shut Down Six Schools That Were On the Chopping Block [SFist]

Image: Head-Royce School Summer Program via Yelp

A child was stabbed by a fellow student at Francisco Middle School in San Francisco on Friday, and the incident comes after several weeks of similar cases of violence and threats at Bay Area schools.

Today's stabbing occurred around 12:45 p.m., as KRON4 reports, and police were dispatched to the school on the 2100 block of Powell Street, near Fisherman's Wharf. The victim was transported to an area hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, and police detained a juvenile suspect.

San Francisco Unified School District put out a statement Friday saying, "There is no active threat to the school community."

While there may be no active threat or coordinated effort at violence, the stabbing Friday is part of a disturbing trend locally.

On Wednesday, Denman Middle School in the Outer Mission was locked down after it was discovered that a student had brought a firearm to campus. Also on Wednesday, a seventh-grader at Sunrise Middle School in San Jose allegedly stabbed a 15-year-old fellow student, causing non-life-threatening injuries.

Last week there was a stabbing at San Jose's Yerba Buena High School in which an 18-year-old was injured, and a juvenile suspect was arrested.

And two weeks ago, a 16-year-old student at Montgomery High School in Santa Rosa was killed in a stabbing and another student was injured — the result of a knife fight in a classroom, and a third student who is 15-year-old was arrested.

Back in December, a student at Skyline High School in Oakland was stabbed by a fellow student — the suspect in that case was 15 years old and the victim was 14 years old.

SFist reported last spring on chaos happening at Everett Middle School on Church Street, after a 13-year-old student there was hospitalized due to injuries from an on-campus fight. Mission Local reported at the time that parents and teachers were blaming "administrative negligence," understaffing, and poor adult supervision for ongoing issues there.

Top image: Photo by Michael Rivera/Wikimedia

Governor Gavin Newsom now has an astonishing amount of surplus money to throw around, and he’s throwing a big chunk to bail out California schools with declining enrollment and awash in red ink.

Some of are old enough to remember that exactly 20 years ago, California was a national laughingstock of fiscal incompetence for being stuck with a $23 billion budget deficit. (That was a lot of money back then!) It was the largest deficit any U.S. state had ever experienced, but we got through it. Fast-forward to when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, we again thought we'd be staring into a painful deficit abyss, with the state projecting a $54.3 billion deficit.

Surprise! On Friday, Governor Gavin Newsom announced the state has an astonishing $97.5 billion surplus, according to NBC News.  “It’s simply without precedent,” Newsom bragged at a press conference, per the Bay Area News Group. “No other state in American history has ever experienced a surplus as large as this.”

At the time, NBC News reported that Newsom would use some of this money on “additional spending to tackle the ongoing drought, to help more women get abortions in California and to offset rising costs of food, gas and other goods due to inflation.”

All fine goals, but the Bay Area News Group reports that Newsom will also put a bunch of the surplus into the state’s pandemic-battered school system. In classic Newsom-speak, the governor said “This is about education reform. This is about completely reimagining the education system.”

Per the news group, Newsom will propose putting “$8 billion in a ‘flexible block grant,’ or one-time discretionary fund, schools can use to address student mental health, professional development, pension costs or other needs.” That sounds like a pretty much no-strings-attached fund. Multiple billions will also go into battling declining enrollment, school meals, and upgrading aging facilities.

This has to be welcome news for San Francisco Unified, a school district drowning in red ink, struggling to pay teachers, and facing a state takeover. The proof will be in the implementation, not just Gavin’s grand pronouncements, but we can still savor the rare moment here when California schools actually get some good news.

Related: Yes, SFUSD is Running a Huge Deficit — But So Are Other Districts All Over the State [SFist]

Image: @GavinNewsom via Twitter

The long-awaited lifting of the state's mask mandate for schoolchildren arrives in two weeks — though individual school districts may still decide to keep it in place longer. And California is making the move in conjunction with Oregon and Washington, directly following the CDC's easing of mask guidelines in parts of the country where the Omicron wave is fading.

March 12 will be the first day of school without masks in two years for many kids in California, finally bringing an end to one of the most contentious issues of the pandemic — at least in some circles, and in some school districts. Even in liberal, mask-loving San Francisco, some parents were out rallying against masks for schoolkids on Sunday in Golden Gate Park with signs that said things like "Oxygen is Essential" — and one protesting parent who spoke to the Chronicle said all her friends call her "QAnon" when she brings up the mask issue, but she insists she's not a Republican, conspiracy theorist, or anti-vaxxer. Her sign read "I am a Democrat. I am Vaccinated. I Want Mask Choice."

A majority of San Francisco parents are still supportive of school mask mandates, though, and it's not yet clear if San Francisco Unified School District will adopt the state's rules as of March 12. The only Bay Area county that immediately said it would align with the state's guidance was Solano County, per the Chronicle.

Update: San Francisco's Department of Public Health announced Monday that it would align with the state's recommendations regarding schools, however SF Unified School District has put out a statement saying it will not, and the masks will stay on in public schools until some later date.

In a statement Monday, Governor Gavin Newsom hedged away from saying this lifting of the mask mandate in schools is permanent.

"California continues to adjust our policies based on the latest data and science, applying what we’ve learned over the past two years to guide our response to the pandemic,” Newsom said. “Masks are an effective tool to minimize spread of the virus and future variants, especially when transmission rates are high. We cannot predict the future of the virus, but we are better prepared for it and will continue to take measures rooted in science to keep California moving forward."

In addition to lifting the mask order for California schools after March 11, Newsom announced that the indoor mask rule for unvaccinated adults will be suspended as of Tuesday, March 1.

But, masks will still be required statewide, indefinitely, on public transportation, and in emergency shelters, health care settings, correctional facilities, homeless shelters, and long-term care facilities.

Similar announcements were made Monday morning by Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee.

On Friday, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky announced that mask guidelines affecting around 70% of Americans living in moderate- or low-transmission areas could be relaxed. But, she also urged caution and her announcement was far from rosy.

"None of us know what the future holds for us and for this virus," Walensky said. "And we need to be prepared and we need to be ready for whatever comes next. We want to give people a break from things like mask wearing when our levels are low, and then have the ability to reach for them again if things get worse in the future."

Walensky did say that the CDC would be revisiting the federal mask mandate for public transportation and on airplanes in the coming weeks.

Individuals at high risk for COVID-19 complications should still consider taking extra precautions, Walensky said, such as avoiding crowds and wearing a high-quality mask in indoor spaces.

Photo: Getty Images

Kids walked out of class in one school district near Sacramento to protest the mask mandate, while other districts are just refusing to enforce mask-wearing, as tension grows over California dropping mask mandates in general — but not for schools.

Wednesday’s rescinding of the indoor mask mandate for vaccinated individuals may have had an unintended consequence. While California public schools will not drop their mask mandates until March 1 at the earliest, some districts, particularly in more rural and conservative parts of the state, are infuriated by the lag between a February 16 date for the mask mandate being dropped, and the March 1 date for schools. And because we are definitely not getting out of COVID-19 without at least a few more culture wars, EdSource reports that some school California districts are now flouting the school mask mandate.

“A lot of districts throughout the state are loosening up and just trying to get through the next two weeks,” California Small School Districts’ Association  executive director Tim Taylor told Bay City News. “Parents are getting upset and saying everything is maskless except schools.”

From a purely empirical standpoint, the state is considering a variety of factors in the continuance of school mask mandates. Per Bay City News, these include “student vaccination rates, COVID case numbers, hospitalization rates and national and global trends.”

But the mask culture wars stopped being empirical a long time ago. And while defiance of the mandates is not widespread across the state, there are a few notable rabble-rousers. At Oak Ridge High School in El Dorado Hills, near Sacramento, students walked out of class in protests of the mandates continuing in schools. A few dozen students walked out at Nevada Union High School in Grass Valley. And Roseville Joint Union High School District in Placer County has now declared masks optional, in full defiance of state orders.

State health officials are not pleased with this. California Department of Public Health Director Tomas J. Aragon fumed in a letter to schools that “Unfortunately, some elected officials and school leaders have expressed the intent to violate the law — and risk their students’ safety — by failing to enforce the universal mask requirement for indoor school settings.” He added that “To be clear: failure to enforce the mask requirement breaches not only a legal duty, but also the first and foremost duty of every school leader — to protect students. Violation of mandatory public health guidance puts the health and safety of students, staff and their families, needlessly at risk, and also carries significant legal, financial, and other risks.”

School districts could be legally liable if a student or staff member contracts COVID-19 over non-enforcement of mask mandates.

This is a small number of districts acting in outright defiance of the mandate. And ideally, it will only be a couple of weeks until schools do officially drop the masks — the state said this week that it would wait until February 28 to reassess the situation. But it seems public health has little to do with the latest mask histrionics. And as the Roseville Secondary Education Association teacher’s union told Bay City News, “Teachers have now been put in a no-win situation no matter what we try to do.”

Related: Schoolkids May Get to Drop Masks In March, Not Before [SFist]

Photo: Mika Baumeister

After announcing guidance for California public schools on Monday that had been leaked out on Friday, and facing backlash from critics of Governor Newsom's pandemic response in general, the state's public health department is backtracking a bit.

On Tuesday, likely under pressure from Newsom as he anticipates September's recall election and attack ads to come, state health officials changed course and said that public schools do not have to send students home if they refuse to wear a mask if it is not district policy to do so. As the Associated Press reports, the revised guidance leaves more control in the hands of local districts where mask mandates may not end up being so strict. And officials say that if a district does keep strict masking rules and a school does send a student home for refusing to wear one, that student must be permitted to complete their schoolwork from home.

Newsom spokesperson Alex Stack said in a statement, "The original wording was made in error. The guidance was updated to allow for schools to continue enforcing the mask mandate as they have done for the past year while also being able to provide independent study options for students who refuse to wear a mask."

And Troy Flint, a spokesperson for the California School Boards Association, tells the AP that this revision makes "a huge difference in terms of how districts would operate and how the public is going to receive this guidance."

Politics have to have come into play with the change, and even though Newsom has continued to poll well and a recall is unlikely, he's clearly not eager to give his enemies more fodder. Still, the Delta variant and increasing new case counts could pose a challenge in the coming eight weeks before the recall election happens.

Teachers unions have posed one of the biggest sets of obstacles to getting schools reopened, and the state had essentially struck a deal with them to get all students back to in-person learning by saying that masks would continue to be mandatory for all students and staff.

Dr. Monica Gandhi, the UCSF epidemiologist who's become a voice of pragmatism and calm in the late pandemic, tells the AP that the guidance for schools is reasonable given that the vaccination- and infection-rate picture across the state continues to vary. But, she says, districts should consider relaxing mask mandates when infections are low, vaccinations are high, and hospitalizations fall below five per 100,000 residents.

Photo: Kelly Sikkema

There's been another dustup in the many-months' war between Bay Area parents and their children's teachers and school districts, and this time it's about a kindergarten teacher taking a trip out of the country while she's still supposed to be teaching.

The unnamed teacher, reported on Wednesday by the Chronicle in a front-page (online) story that probably wouldn't be front-page in any normal year, sent out an email to the parents of children in her class explaining that she was heading out of town for "12 (+/-) days" to attend her son's "long-deferred wedding in Mexico." The wedding takes place next week, on May 19, and she announced she would be teaching from Mexico, but there would be days during her trip that would be "asynchronous" — i.e., she wouldn't be available live online, but there would be activities/lessons for the kids to do on their own.

The teacher works in the West Contra Costa Unified School District, where schools have reopened for hybrid in-person/remote learning — but teachers were allowed to opt out of teaching in-person, no questions asked, no medical reasons necessary.

Now, as Twitterers have commented after the email was posted as a screenshot to an account devoted to reopening schools in California, no one should expect the woman to have to miss her child's wedding. This may be an issue of the school not having enough substitutes to cover for her, or it may be an issue of the teacher not wanting to miss a paycheck and bending the rules due to remote learning.

The Chronicle reports that under state law, students must have daily interaction with teachers, even if it is online — and under district policy, teachers must take leaves of absence if they leave the country for any reason.

The case gained much attention — and the tweet above hundreds of retweets — since it came to light on Monday, largely because of ongoing grievances and tensions among parents and school districts over the disjointed and delayed reopening plans around the Bay Area and beyond.

In a separate case, back in February, the president of the Berkeley teachers' union was videotaped taking his daughter to in-person school, all while fighting to keep unionized teachers from returning to the classroom until all of them were vaccinated. At the time, Berkeley's school district was drawing up plans to return to in-person learning in March, but the teachers' union was fighting hard to delay.

In San Francisco, parents and their kids have staged "Zoom-in" protests on the lawns outside schools, with kids in class on their iPads just steps away from actual classrooms, pressing for classrooms to reopen. And while some younger students have returned the classroom, high school students have not. Just this week, the SF teachers' union agreed to allow high school seniors back into schools before the end of the school year, which is four weeks away. However, as the Chronicle reported, most people didn't realize when the news came out that this plan may only amount to one or two days at school for a segment of students, and possibly not even at their own schools — a concession that the teachers hoped would mean the district could still qualify for $12 million in state funding.

Many school districts across the state have fully reopened, after teachers were among the first to receive vaccinations back in February and March. Still, other districts have not, and this has many parents questioning how these issues are being decided, and whether teachers' unions have acted in good faith about health and safety concerns over in-person learning. And many districts are still talking about continuing distanced learning, at least part of the time, in the fall.

"It just was absolutely ridiculous hearing about what was happening [with this teacher in Contra Costa County],” says Jonathan Zachreson, founder of Reopen California Schools, which posted the teacher's email to Twitter on Monday, in response to the Chronicle. "These institutions are abusing any leverage or any flexibility that they have. If we give them an inch, they take a mile."

Others in the district, including a parent in the kindergarten class in question, suggests that this one incident isn't indicative of any larger problem. "Many teachers are working really hard and it is sad that our teacher’s poor choice is making other teachers look bad," said one anonymous parent to the Chronicle.

The Contra Costa Board of Education tells the paper that the superintendent is looking into this teacher's case, and a trustee noted that "there are protocols for employees to take time off," and "I do not know if they were followed in this situation."

Photo: Laurentiu Morariu

Two weeks after it advanced to the state's "Orange" tier, Alameda County announced that middle schools and high schools may reopen on or after November 9, with restrictions.

Alameda County, which is second only to Santa Clara County for the most number of confirmed COVID-19 cases to date in the Bay Area, is like six other counties in the region now in the state's second-least restrictive tier for reopening. When the county moved into the "Orange" tier, indicating "moderate" spread of the virus, it allowed elementary schools to reopen as of October 13. In taking this next step two weeks from now, the county will be allowing all school-age children in the county to return for in-person classes, though it is leaving it up to individual districts and schools whether they choose to do so.

As KPIX reports, only 58 elementary schools in the county, most of them private, have opted to reopen so far.

County health department spokesperson Neetu Balram issued a statement Wednesday saying, "Although cases are rising elsewhere in the United States, the sustained stability of local COVID-19 metrics in Alameda County and the surrounding Bay Area counties allows us to move to the next phase of school opening for in-person learning."

As of today, the county has an adjusted rate of new cases per 100,000 people of 3.2 — the figure is adjusted down based on the prevalence of testing in a county — and an overall test positivity rate of 1.6% (San Francisco's is currently 0.82%, and SF County is the only one in the Bay Area to reach the "Yellow" tier, though it has not reopened most high schools for in-person classes yet.)

"The Public Health Department and the Health Care Services Agency are responsible for determining when it is safe to permit students and staff to return to in-person education in Alameda County," said Dr. Nicholas Moss, the Alameda County's Interim Health Officer, in a statement, adding that if cases suddenly begin to spike, restrictions and health orders may change.

He added that not all schools will have the same resources to protect students and teachers by the November 9 date. "Some schools will need more time and should open classrooms only when they and their school communities are prepared to do so," he said.

All schools need to submit a COVID-19 health and safety reopening plan to the county before being allowed to reopen.

Photo: Feliphe Schiarolli

Woodrow Wilson is taken to the woodshed, as his namesake school in Richmond will become Michelle Obama Elementary School, and you know they’re going to serve healthy school lunches there.

You are likely not familiar with Woodrow Wilson Elementary School in Richmond, a roughly 100-year-old facility currently being renovated. But that 430-student school is set to become a Bay Area darling, as ABC 7 reports it will be renamed Michelle Obama Elementary School when it reopens this fall, in honor of the former First Lady known for her advocacy of healthy eating and the rights of girls in developing nations.

“Naming this school after Michelle Obama is a sign of the school's rebirth,” West Contra Costa Unified School District board president Stephanie Hernandez-Jarvis said in a release after the unanimous vote. “We can see the new physical structure being built, but this name change sets high expectations for the students and staff as they enter a new era for this school and this school community. The parents and students advocated to rename their school after Michelle Obama because they believe the values our former First Lady embodies.”

There’s already one Michelle Obama Elementary School in southern California’s Panorama City. As the Chronicle informs us, the Richmond school is currently being renovated, and temporarily has its campus in El Cerrito. The renaming will coincide with the reopening of the school scheduled for August 17, 2020.

Parent Teacher Association president Maisha Cole, who came up with the idea, hopes Obama can be there for the opening. "She has to come!,” Cole told KGO. “Any way we can get here out here. I mean I am putting out all the positive energy in the universe to get her out here." Of course, Michelle Obama generally charges $200,000 for a speech according to Axios, but I imagine exceptions are made for things like school naming ceremonies.

At current, the Wilson Elementary's website, Twitter account, and Facebook account still retain the Wilson name. We imagine they’ll go high when the school year begins.

Related: Michelle Obama ⁠— Tamale Lover [SFist]

Image: Official White House photo via Wikimedia Commons