West Contra Costa Unified is the latest Bay Area school district to come to a tentative agreement with teachers unions over how the school day will work for teachers and students under distance learning.
WCCUSD teachers will vote whether to ratify the agreement this week.
The deal calls for teachers to keep to their regular school work hours, beginning at 8:15 a.m. for prep time before students join for a live, 25-minute homeroom session at 10 a.m. That's when attendance will be taken — though students would not need to have their video feed turned on. The school day will end at 3 p.m. and include time for a 40-minute lunch break — enough time for parents or students to pick up grab-and-go lunches.
The lower grades will complete 45-minute instructional blocks with 10-minute “passing periods,” or breaks. Upper grades will meet for four, 55-minute classes. Those blocks can be live or recorded, at the teacher’s discretion.
Senate Bill 98, the education rider in Gov. Gavin Newsom's budget, calls for daily instruction for a minimum of three hours per day for younger grades, and four hours a day for everyone else. But how much of that time teachers needed to spend in live, synchronous contact with students versus recorded lessons has been a big part of negotiations in many districts.